RETIRMENT was never going to be a feet up affair for Bill Rogers.

But after more than 30 years of teaching many would think the last thing he would want to do is pick up a pen and paper, but quite the contrary.

Because Mr Rogers is a 10-times crime novelist. Before becoming an author Mr Rogers, a grandfather-of-four, enjoyed various teaching and educational based roles, but a ‘life of crime’ was always in his blood.

The 72-year-old, from Over Hulton, said: “I come from four generations of Metropolitan Police Officers. My great-grandfather was a station sergeant, my grandfather was Churchill’s bodyguard at the Sidney Street Massacre and founder member of the Flying Squad, my father was a PC during the war and my sister is a PC. And I was the one that got away.

“But I had been immersed in the police from a young age and also worked with GMP in my time as an education liaison officer. So I did a lot of work with the police.

“Another reason, teaching and education is a very pressured job and I found the best thing to do was to read thrillers and crime novels. So it was natural I would write about crime.”

It took Mr Rogers three months, at the age of 62, to write his first novel — The Cleansing, which is part of a 10-book-series, featuring DCI Tom Caton and his team, based in Greater Manchester.

His first book was short listed for the Long Barn Books Debut Novel Award, and was awarded the e-Publishing Consortium Writer’s Award 2011.

The fourth in the series — A Trace of Blood — reached the semi-final of the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and all ten books have featured in the top ten paid for bestsellers in the Amazon Kindle British Crime Fiction category.

The father-of-two added: “I get my inspiration from all around me.

“Newspapers, television and a lot of imagination but also a lot is sparked off from real life events. A lot of crime is too awful to contemplate writing about so I try to keep my books authentic and realistic but not gory and bloody. I leave that to imagination.

“My books are more police procedurals because I am more interested in how the crime is solved and why it was committed and the cause and consequence than the act itself.”

Following the success off his first series, last year publisher Thomas and Mercer approached him to write a spin off series, which features Senior Investigator Joanne Stuart, of which he is currently writing the third in the series.

He has also, since retiring 10-years-ago, written a book of walks, a book of short stories and a young adult novel. He added: “I am quite disciplined I spend three days a week writing and enjoy swimming, training, walking and gardening in my spare time and I am a Bolton Wanderers season ticket holder. It usually takes three months to research a book and three months to write one.

“All in all I’ve written 15 books since I retired 10 years ago and I absolutely love it. I’m 21,000 words down the road with the third book and that should be out in March. I hope for much of the same in the future and to keep my fans happy, they are forever asking when the next in the series is out so I don’t want to let them down. I think I will probably write a sort of autobiography in the next couple of years but it won’t be a conventional type, more like a series of episodes in my life that were significant and what I can learn.”