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Craig Russell is a Scottish writer.

He is also known under the pseudonym Christopher Galt.

He was born in 1956 in the Scottish town of Fife. He worked in the police, was a copywriter, and a creative director. Russell speaks German fluently and has a special interest in the history of postwar Germany.

In 2005, Craig published his first thriller, Blood Eagle, about Hamburg police detective Jan Fabel. The book became a bestseller, and the publishing rights were sold to 23 countries. In Germany and France, the novel received detective-fiction awards as the best police novel.

Russell explains his creation of books describing crimes in Germany by his longstanding and enduring interest in German culture and the German people. About Hamburg, he says, “I love Hamburg. It is the most British city outside the United Kingdom, and its harbor, canals, greenery, and architecture provide the perfect backdrop for a thriller.” The half-German, half-Scottish police commissioner Jan Fabel resembles Kurt Wallander, the protagonist of Henning Mankell, Russell’s favorite writer. The influence of another classic detective-fiction author, Raymond Chandler, can be felt in the novels of the “Lennox” series, which Craig Russell began in 2009. Private investigator Lennox is “a hard man in a hard city in a hard time: Glasgow, 1953, where the war may be over, but the battle for the streets is only beginning”; the books are written in the neo-noir genre.

Craig Russell’s hobbies include painting, travel, cooking, and studying German.

The writer lives with his family near Glasgow in Perthshire.