by A series of rugby league crime thriller was nominated for a Dagger Association of crime writers.
The series, written by Chris Berry, follows the character Greg Duggan, who was compared to Jack Reacher, James Bond and John McClane by Die Hard.
The fourth book in the series, Heath Season: The French Connection, was released at the start of the 2025 season.
The series was greeted for its action, its suspense and its twists and turns.
Mr. Berry said: “Murders, chaos and mystery mean that Greg’s life is constantly in danger while he tries to juggle his career on the field and his always complicated love life.”
“Greg is an imperfect hero.
“His wife left him.
“He wants to see more of his young son, Kyle, and his girlfriend Susie, and he wants to get back in shape, this time to play for a new Super League club in the southwest of France, but the death of eminent people in Aerospace Valley and a mysterious woman called fortune make the realization of all this but simple.”
(Image: supplied) The series started in 2019 with a difficult season, when Greg played for a team in difficulty in the lower level of the professional game.
He has since played in Lanzarote during the difficult season in Sun (2020) and Australia and in the South Pacific in the hard world (2021).
Mr. Berry said: “Each book sees Greg in difficult situations.
“He is a great player, but he is not a detective and must somehow make his way, well, I would better not tell you, because it would spoil things.
“Let’s just say that this is where some readers talked about Greg as a factor of the world of sport.”
Mr. Berry said he had readers saying that Greg Duggan would make an excellent Netflix series or even a feature film, but that he has not yet received the news of options.
He said: “There have never been that two general feature films taking place around Rugby League.
“These are the excellent, granular of this sporting life published in 1963 on the basis of the superb novel by David Storey, who saw Richard Harris in the main role and Rachel Roberts nominated for an Oscar; and the fabulous, funny up by John Godber, who did very well at the box office in 1998.
“It would be great to see Greg brought to the screen, whatever the size.
“I had a meeting with someone from one of the main northern financing organizations for television and cinema recently, so you never know.”
Mr. Berry said that he had chosen a rugby league player as a central character in the difficult series because sport has always been the one he loved and that he still does not get the recognition it deserves.
He said: “I lived in the north of England all my life, my publisher Great Northern Books is based near Warrington.
“I was born and I grew up in Hull in the East Yorkshire.
“The Rovers (Hull Kr) are my team and we recently led High like Warrington, but it’s a new season and, just as it is in the Greg world, the games are always difficult.”
Berry said he started working on the difficult fifth book, difficult.
