He won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best thriller of the Year in 2013 and was long listed for a John Creasey Award for Best First Novel that year too. 'Roger was a new shining talent on the crime writing scene and from the moment we bought him seemed destined to join the ranks of those American greats like James Ellroy and James Lee Burke he so admired. Scott-Kerr said in a note to colleagues: 'It grieves me beyond measure to have to tell you of the tragic news of the death of Roger Hobbs, the brilliant, mercurial author of our two Ghostman thrillers, Ghostman and Vanishing Games. By 24 he was an international bestseller, and by 25, according to Transworld, he had been nominated for 'nearly every major award in crime fiction'. He signed a movie deal at 21, graduated after majoring in English at 22, and signed a book deal at 23. He had his first publication in the New York Times at 20. He completed his first novel (a sci-fi), aged 13, and produced his first play when he was 19. Hobbs begun his writing career at a young age.

Rachel Rayner, commissioning editor at Transworld Publishers, wrote for The Bookseller in 2013 that 'it’s clear that Roger has an incredible future ahead', after the success of his debut that also secured him a film deal with Warner Bros. In 2015, he became the youngest person ever to win the Maltese Falcon award. In 2014, he won the Strand Critics award and was nominated for the Edgar, Barry, and Anthony awards. As well as winning the award for the best thriller of 2013, he was longlisted for a John Creasey Award for Best First Novel that year. Hobbs' debut Ghostman, he wrote during his senior year of college, made him the youngest person ever to win a CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. And as his friend I'm doubly devastated.'īill Scott-Kerr, publisher at Transworld, said of Hobbs it was 'too upsetting to contemplate what he might have gone on to achieve', as 'a new shining talent on the crime writing scene'.

Roger accomplished so much as a writer in so little time, and his future was sure to be extraordinary in ways we'll now never know. Gary Fisketjon, Hobbs' editor at Knopf, said in a statement: 'It is is a shocking, tragic loss. American thriller writer Roger Hobbs, author of Ghostman and Vanishing Games (Transworld), has died, aged 28, after an overdose.

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs