Simon Mason

2014 saw the publication of the young adult murder mystery novel, Running Girl, featuring Garvie Smith "a combination of the eccentric and hardboiled detective types - a natural maths genius with an off-the-scale IQ who chooses to be a slacker." It was shortlisted for the 2014 Costa Children's Book Award. In 2016, the second Garvie Smith thriller, Kid Got Shot (Kid Alone in the US), was published, described in Crime Review as "clever, complex, original, and very, very absorbing". It won the 2017 Crimefest Prize for Best Crime Novel for Young Adults. The third novel in the series, Hey, Sherlock!, was published in 2019, described by Philip Pullman as "the most intriguing kind of whodunit", and welcomed by the Sunday Times as "irresistible . . . as twisty, clever and riveting as the others." .

Mason's 2011 novel, Moon Pie, published by David Fickling Books was short-listed for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.

The Quigleys marked the start of a series featuring the eccentric Quigley family and was short-listed for the Branford Boase Award in 2003.

He is the author of The Rough Guide to Classic Novels, in the Rough Guides series, published in 2003. It is described as "a consummate demonstration that it is possible to celebrate the finest achievements of the human race in the arts and humanities without couching them in forbidding academic language".

In 2002, Mason wrote the children's series The Quigleys, about a spirited and lovable family.

Lives of the Dog-Stranglers was published by Jonathan Cape in 1998. It is described as "Like any suburb in the south of England, Parkside's character is formed by rumour and fantasy and everyone is the figment of his neighbour's imagination: 'We're anything they want us to be - murderers, redheads, philanderers, dog-stranglers.' This is an elegant, savage farce of suburbia."

Death of a Fantasist was published by Constable in 1994. It was described by The Independent as "inevitably reminiscent of Martin Amis. Its well-crafted comedy gets blacker and blacker until suddenly the reader finds the balance has shifted: there is real menace in the air."

The Great English Nude, published by Constable in 1990, won a £2,000 Betty Trask Award in 1991 for first novels written by authors under the age of 35 in a romantic or traditional, but not experimental, style.

Simon Mason (born 5 February 1962) is a British author of juvenile and adult fiction.

Simon Mason was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, on 5 February 1962. His father was the footballer Cliff Mason. He was educated at local schools and studied English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. From February 2019 he has split his time between writing and working at Pushkin Press. He lives with his wife in Oxford.