James Vasey

English writer James Vasey published his debut novel Cooking Up a Country in 2018. This is a mystery romance whose characters continued to occupy Vasey’s mind until he authored two more books featuring them – Unlikely Pairings and Recipe for a Nation, all to be eventually combined into the Seborga Trilogy. In 2025 the Oscar-winning director Kristóf Deák began working on the screenplay for a feature film based on Cooking up a Country.

Having been bitten by the writing bug, James turned his attention to an urban myth from his hometown involving Jimi Hendrix. Hope the Dude Can Play is both the title of his novel and the reported words of the legendary musician when his guitar was stolen in Darlington in 1967. A screenplay has been written and it is anticipated this story will be adapted into a film.

Switching genres again, James published a children’s bedtime story, The Dog in the Wrong Place, using his own Labrador as the protagonist and his Italian village home as the setting.

Most recently, The Dining Detective – a foodie crime thriller – almost invented a genre of its own. A character driven story of faked artisan foods and fine wines set in multiple regions of Italy. Initially written by Vasey as a proposal for a TV drama, it has been taken up by Ramon Productions of Rome who plan to make the series in Italy.

James Vasey’s writing is coloured by an eclectic career as a retail, technology, and media entrepreneur, including a decade in magazine publishing and culminating in what he thought was a final chapter as a university lecturer.

Six books, two short stories and a couple of screenplays later, it seems yet another career was beckoning.