Medway author Matthew Ross has published his third book and this one is set on the Isle of Sheppey.

Mr Ross explained: "My father was originally from the Island and my family have connections there going back generations, so it was a natural place for me to write about."

Burning Bridges is a black tale of gangster revenge, which begins with a heist in the car storage yards at Sheerness Docks.

Mr Ross likes to set his work in locations that he knows.

His first two books were both set in the Medway Towns, with his debut novel Death of a Painter chosen by the Sun newspaper as one of their Picks of the Week.

He said: "My first two stories were both really comic crime stories, but my new one is a bit darker."

Matthew Ross was born and raised in Medway.

He attended the Howard School in Rainham, leaving at 16 to follow his father into the construction industry where he worked on everything from small domestic repairs to multi-million pound infrastructure projects.

Following the old adage 'write about what you know,' his first two books featured his hero Mark Poynter, an electrician who discovers a body on a building site.

He said: "I’ve been in and around the building industry for more than 30 years and I’ve met all sorts of characters there, so there was plenty of inspiration available for my books."

Mr Ross is perhaps unique among authors in having his work reviewed by Professional Builder Magazine, where he revealed that he had indeed once found human remains while working on a building site on the banks of the River Medway.

Fortunately, they turned out to be the bones of convicts who had been housed on prison hulks on the river in the 1700s, and were not proof of a recent crime.

His love of writing began when he tried a change of career as a stand-up comedian.

He said: "It was an experience both I and my audiences would probably rather forget, but it did ignite my love of writing."

Subsequently he wrote material for other comics and for several BBC Radio 4 comedy shows.

In 2017, he graduated from the Faber Academy which teaches creative writing and gave him the confidence to try novel writing.

Death Of A Painter, published in 2020, and his second book, The Red Admiral's Secret, both feature the comic capers of Mark Poynter.

Burning Bridges is a stand-alone revenge thriller.

Mr Ross, 50, list his hobbies as reading, 80s' music and travelling.

He is married to a New Zealander, Rebecca and they have two sons.

Burning Bridges is available in paperback from Amazon at £8.99. ISBN: 978-1-912946-25-9