Miles Barton Tripp was an English writer of thirty-seven works of fiction including crime novels and thrillers, some of which he wrote under noms de plume Michael Brett and John Michael Brett. He served in RAF Bomber Command

RAF Bomber Command

RAF Bomber Command controlled the RAF's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. During World War II the command destroyed a significant proportion of Nazi Germany's industries and many German cities, and in the 1960s stood at the peak of its postwar military power with the V bombers and a supplemental...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, flying thirty-seven sorties as a bomber-aimer. He recorded his wartime experiences in his one non-fiction work, the memoir The Eighth Passenger. After the war, Tripp studied law and worked as a solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

, and started to write fiction during his spare time. He lived in Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Some of his novels, although they are about the themes of the law, crime, and retribution, are not in the classic crime fiction mould in that they are not whodunnits

Whodunit

A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...

. For example, in Extreme Provocation the narrator is a man who says in the very first six words of the first chapter "After killing my wife I telephoned..." and the entire story is about how and why the character came to find himself in that situation, exactly what his state of mind was, how the law courts would treat him, and how his life thereafter would continue. It is thus not a conventional crime novel but is all about an event that may or may not be deemed a crime. The interest for the reader is in the gradual revelation of the narrator's state of mind and his motivations.

Non-Fiction

• The Eighth Passenger: The Experiences of a Bomb Aimer in Lancaster Bombers During the 2nd World War (1969)

Fiction

(Titles marked § are in the series about Tripp's creation, the private detective John Samson)

• Faith Is a Windsock (1952)
• The Image of Man (1955)
• A Glass of Red Wine (1960)
• Kilo Forty (1963) (a.k.a. Death Is Catching)
• The Skin Dealer (1964)
• Diecast (1964) (writing as Michael Brett)
• A Quarter of Three (1965)
• A Plague of Dragons (1965) (writing as John Michael Brett)
• The Chicken (1966)
• A Cargo of Spent Evil (1966) (writing as John Michael Brett)
• Fifth Point of the Compass (1967)
• One Is One (1968)
• Malice and the Maternal Instinct (1969)
• Man Without Friends (1970)
• Five Minutes with a Stranger (1971)
• Claws of God (1972)
• Obsession (1973) §
• Woman at Risk (1974)
• Woman in Bed (1976) §
• Once a Year Man (1977) §
• Wife Smuggler (1978) §
• Cruel Victim (1979) §
• High Heels (1980) §
• Going Solo (1981)
• One Lover Too Many (1983) §
• A Charmed Death (1984)
• Some Predators Are Male (1985) §
• Death of Man Tamer (1987) §
• The Frightened Wife (1987) §
• The Cords of Vanity (1989) §
• Video Vengeance (1990) §
• The Dimensions of Deceit (1993)
• A Woman of Conscience (1994)
• Extreme Provocation (1995)
• Samson and the Greek Delilah (1995) §
• The Suitcase Killings (1997)
• Deadly Ordeal (1999) §