I left school with no qualifications - now I'm a literary superstar in America

Six months before All The Colours Of The Dark was published, author Chris Whitaker heard on the QT that it was going to be picked by Jenna Bush Hager - daughter of former US President George W Bush - for her book club.Along with Hollywood star Reese Witherspoon and chat show queen Oprah Winfrey, Jenna's book club is the biggest and most influential in America. It was a huge moment for the London-born author - and he wasn't allowed to tell a soul!

"You're sworn to secrecy but, even then, you never really know how well the book will do," explains Chris. "It can still bomb - it happens all the time, it's not a guarantee of success - but when I finished All The Colours Of The Dark I knew it was the best book I'd ever written and if people didn't like it, I couldn't give them any more. That was a vulnerable feeling."

In the event, the novel, published in July last year, was a smash-hit, spending 22 weeks on the prestigious New York Times bestsellers list and turning Chris, 43, into one of the UK's biggest cultural exports. It has sold a staggering 1.5 million copies around the world and, having just come out in paperback in the US, is back in thebestsellers' charts. Its author has now visited27 US states and counting, after touring exhaustively over the past 12 months.

Chris's breakthrough book, We Begin At The End, won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year at Sunday Express-supported festival in Harrogate in 2021. It had a 20-year gestation. Chris had begun writing as a form of therapy after being stabbed during a phone robbery aged just 19.

The Montana-set story introduced the remarkable Duchess Day Radley - a 13-year-old trying to protect her family from a killer who returns to their town after 30 years in prison for murdering her aunt. It was a tough act to follow, but having become a full-time writer in the meantime, the former estate agent and City trader conceived his follow-up at the beginning of 2018 and spent the next five years writing it.

"The pitch was two abducted teenagers who fall in love in the pitch-black basement where they're being held having never seen each other - the boy escapes and can't find his way back to the girl," says Chris. While elements changed over the course of the writing, that ingenious top line remained and the resulting characters - Joseph "Patch" Macauley and Grace, the voice in the darkness who inspires him - soon captured the hearts of readers.

"It was set up like a mystery but everyone who had read We Begin At The End was messaging me asking what happens to Duchess - because when the book ends she's 14 and everyone was like, 'What happens to this girl?'. And I didn't know the answer and it was a big question: 'What happens to a child that has had a traumatic start in life as they enter adulthood?'. So that changed the shape of All The Colours Of The Dark. It became less of a mystery and more of a saga."

The resulting book, which spans generations and mixes a missing persons mystery with a serial killer thriller and heart-breaking love story, sees Patch escape - kick-starting an epic search with his friend Saint Brown to find the girl from the darkness, even though there's no tangible evidence she ever existed in the first place.

"When you decide that you're going to follow a character from childhood into adulthood, it no longer fits neatly into a genre," Chris admits. "You know, I think the crime's the least interesting thing in the book. It started as a coming of age book and then became a book about friendship and first love and family - and less about the actual crime."

The extraordinary novel was shortlisted for this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2025, missing out to Abir Mukherjee's pulse-pounding thriller Hunted, but Chris remains sanguine. "I'm happy it was Abir's year," he says. "It's such a brilliant book."

However, he admits to occasionally having to "pinch himself" over the reaction to All The Colours Of The Dark - including meeting former President George W Bush during a charity event at the Bush family's Walker's Point Estate in Maine. "He just appeared beside me, gave a quick speech and then shook my hand and asked if I wanted to come to the main house and have a look at his paintings," Chris recalls. "He's got a big collection, he paints himself, he's really talented. He's incredibly charming, funny, and still has that kind of mischievousness, a bit like a kid."

He continues: "That was one of the moments where I thought of how far the book has got me. From someone who dropped out of school with no qualifications, no real education, to walking around with the ex-President. This is what storytelling can do." He is also full of praise for his American readers. "They have their arms wide open when I go to events," he smiles.

"People are genuinely shocked when I open my mouth, because they think I'm American. They're just so welcoming. The book has really hit the sweet spot of book club fiction there."

As for the audio book, which has done equally well, Chris plumped for American actor Edoardo Ballerini, 55, who appeared in The Sopranos among other shows. "I had a very distinct voice in mind when I read the book back to myself. It's not in my London voice. They sent me eight different actors reading the same passage, and Edoardo was head and shoulders. Not just the best, but the best for this book - exactly how I imagined it."

Despite having met President Bush, and seen former First Lady Dr Jill Biden pictured on a beach reading his novel, Chris's proudest moment was taking his three children, aged 14, 11 and five, to see a billboard in London advertising its success.

"I took my kids to see it, there's a photo of it on my Instagram, and they're holding hands looking at it, and it said over one million copies sold - and that was the first time it really dawned on me, seeing it on this big thing," he adds.

"My 11-year-old is a massive Arsenal fan. We were at the Emirates and he said he was working out how many Emirates stadiums' [full of people] have read the book."

As for his enormous success, he adds: "I genuinely think it's because I relate to the characters I'm writing. I had a difficult childhood and all of my books feature teenagers having a difficult time when they're kids.

"I know that feeling. I couldn't have written Patch and Saint and I couldn't have written Duchess if I couldn't empathise with what they're going through. I think that is the difference."

Next up is a love story for adults called The Time Keeper. It is due in 2027 but Chris admits it might take a bit longer, given how much travelling he's had to do.

"It looks at the idea of fate and time and how much control we really have over either of those things - and it's a big sprawling love story," he adds, praising his "brilliant" editor, Emad Akhtar, for his patience with All The Colours.

"For four years, me and Emad met for lunch every few months in London and he couldn't have been more supportive," he smiles. "I missed my deadline by two years and at no point was there any pressure. I wasn't told to write a certain type of book, I was given complete freedom and support to just write the book I needed to write."

While he isn't planning to return to crime writing, he adds of the Festival: "Wherever I am in the world, I see Harrogate on the calendar and I feel it's like coming home to the readers, to the other writers, to people that run the festival. It is my safe place."

• All The Colours Of The Dark By Chris Whitaker (Orion, £9.99) is out now