Peter B. Smith lives with his wife on Quadra Island, British Columbia, where he retired after a 37-year career as a newspaper crime reporter. He was the crime reporter for The News in Portsmouth, England, for 21 years, where he was on call with all three emergency services—fire, police and ambulance—covering thousands of stories of death and destruction. After immigrating to Canada in 1987, he was the crime reporter at the Calgary Sun for 16 years, retiring in 2003.
Peter has received numerous accolades, including awards for his coverage of the massacre at the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Peter also travelled to England to cover the story of Dr. Harold Shipman, the physician who murdered 216 of his patients.
To satisfy his two main interests in life, sea fishing and stamps, Peter ran a twice-weekly sea-angling column for 10 years in England and wrote more than 600 columns for stamp collectors in the Calgary Sun, spanning 13 years and earning a national Canadian philatelic literary award.
Peter’s first Canadian true-crime book, Prairie Murders: Mysteries, Crimes and Scandals, is also published by Heritage House. His previous works include Sea Angling in Southern England and the official history of the Portsmouth (England) Fire Brigade, Go To Blazes, as well as a specialist stamp book called Vanuatu’s Postal History—The First Decade. Peter is currently working on a history of the postal service, post offices and postmasters on the tiny islands around his Quadra Island home.