Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Peter James has sold 23 million copies of his crime thrillers worldwide with 21 consecutive UK Sunday Times number ones, as well as chart-toppers in Germany, France, Russia and Canada. He’s also a New York Times best-seller, his murder mysteries translated into 38 languages.

It’s afforded him an enviable lifestyle. At the end of his 60s (he’s now 76), he and second wife, Lara, moved to Jersey.

“We’re Brexiles,” he says. “I also wanted somewhere quiet, a bolthole in which to write.”

He's back on home turf to launch the seventh adaptation of one of his thrillers, Picture You Dead, set in the veiled world of high-end art forgery, already a bestseller on paper and surely set to replicate that success on stage.

Peter met producer Josh Andrews at a party in 2010 and they hit it off immediately. “We have similar taste.”

Writing books and writing stage plays are different disciplines, of course, quite apart from the fact it would be torture, says Peter, slimming down 120,000 words or so on paper into a 25,000-word script for two hours of theatre.

Step forward Shaun McKenna, the writer who has adapted six of the thrillers for the stage and just completed the script for Picture You Dead.

What made the book such a pleasure to write, says Peter, was that he had the good fortune to meet real-life forger David Henty, 65, who lives up the road in Saltdean.

“In 2015 I co-wrote a book, Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton, with former Commander of Brighton and Hove Police, Graham Bartlett. It was Graham who introduced me to Henty.”

Twenty years earlier, Henty had been a successful passport forger specialising in fake watermarks. When the police eventually kicked in the door of the forgery factory, Henty was arrested, along with his co-conspirators, and sentenced to five years in prison. It was to be the making of him.

His white-collar crime meant he had a pretty easy time of it inside. “I quickly found my way to the art room where I could paint to my heart’s content under the watchful eye of a couple of teachers.” What he couldn’t have predicted was his innate talent.

He has the rare gift of being able to copy the work of any painter from Fragonard to Caravaggio (“He’s my favourite: I love the drama in his paintings”), from Van Gogh to Rembrandt, from Picasso to Banksy. And he can fool almost anyone that these paintings are genuine.

“It’s what gave me the idea of the plot for Picture Me Dead,” says Peter.

The stage version stars Peter Ash, fresh from his moving portrayal of Paul Foreman, wasting away from Motor Neurone Disease in Coronation Street, for which he won various awards including the 2024 National Television Award for Best Serial Drama Performance.

He's bearded these days (“I had to be clean-shaven in Corrie”) but he still gets recognised when he’s out and about, “even if I’m wearing a baseball cap and glasses”.

He’s not complaining. “It was a privilege to play that part and to help educate the public about that cruel disease.”

He was on the soap for six years in total and is looking forward now to touring the UK.

The role of the forger intrigues him. “He’s obviously very talented and passionate about his art. He’s got a history with Roy Grace from when he used to forge passports.”

With big money changing hands, there’s going to be skullduggery along the way.

And fisticuffs? “I must be careful what I reveal but yes, I think we can say there’ll be thrills and spills. It’s going to be quite a ride.”

For actor George Rainsford, 42, who played Ethan Hardy in Casualty for nine years, this will be his second turn round the block, having played Roy Grace in the successful UK tour of Peter James’s Wish You Were Dead in 2023.

“It was great fun doing it the first time but a bit different because you saw Roy and his wife on holiday with their toddler in France. He was out of his comfort zone.

“In Picture You Dead, he’s back in Brighton at work and doing what fans will recognise. He’s heavily involved in a live case with all its twists and turns.”

This one is going to be a bit different, he thinks, because it takes place in a number of locations.

“Funnily enough, Picture You Dead came out in novel form when I was on the last tour as Roy Grace. I downloaded the audio version and listened to it when I was running.”

Could we be sitting here in. two years’ time with George about to tackle Roy for a third time? “Never say never,” he says, with a broad smile.

Jodie Steele, 33, plays Roberta Kilgore, who moves in the darker aspects of the art world.

“I’ve made it my business wherever possible,” she says, “to play baddies: much more fun and something to get your teeth into. I’ve just finished filming the TV series of Malory Towers and I’m a baddie in that, too. Quite different from real life because I’m a total softie.”

Picture You Dead will be her first thriller in a busy career dominated by musicals: Heathers, Blanche in Bonnie and Clyde, Wicked, and Catherine Howard in the all-conquering Six. Most recently, she toured in a new production of Filumena starring Felicity Kendal.

Jodie’s delighted, she says, to be in the stage adaptation of a Peter James book because her older sister, Chloe, is his biggest fan. “She’s read all 21 of his Roy Grace thrillers. The stories are like jigsaw puzzles. He’s a sort of modern-day Agatha Christie.”

Fiona Wade is Freya Kipling married to Harry, an innocent couple who go to a car boot sale where they buy a painting she’s not keen on but that Harry likes.

In time, it’s discovered that there may be an original beneath the painting which, when exposed, could be worth a small fortune. Or is it a forgery?

Fiona’s particularly pleased to have been cast in this production because it reunites her with George Rainsford, who played her husband last year in the hit tour of 2.22 A Ghost Story.

This was a return to the theatre (she’s appeared in Miss Saigon and The Far Pavilions) after more than a decade playing Priya Sharma in Emmerdale.

She bowed out last year – “It was a long run and it changed my life. But I wanted to take the gamble of seeing what else was out there so I asked to be written out. I very much believe in the power of positive thinking and my gamble has paid off.”

Last word to Peter. What is it about whodunits that appeals to the reading – or theatre-going – public?

“People love being scared,” he says, “although in a safe way. Bad things happen in the world so it’s satisfying to see them resolved. And there’s no harm in throwing in a little gallows humour along the way.”

Picture You Dead is at the New Victoria Theatre from Tuesday 18 to Saturday 22 February. For details of programme times and to book tickets visit atgtickets.com/Woking