It’s quite exciting to be sitting in a scene from a book.

But I’m told the Salterns Hotel in Lilliput, where I sit chatting to author Andrew Towning, features quite heavily in his series of four thriller novels.

“Those flats over there are in the book as well,” he said, pointing down Salterns Way.

With its golden sands, swanky bars and fine dining restaurants, millionaire’s playground Sandbanks seems an unlikely setting for such a book.

But they say write about what you know, and Andrew, 52, certainly knows the area.

By day, he sells furniture fittings to the area’s residents, but by night, he writes about the seedy underground of crime permeating the idyllic seaside spot – all imaginary, of course.

“I set them in Sandbanks because, wherever there’s an affluent society, you often get a soft underbelly”, Andrew smiles.

“Also because I love the area.”

Growing up in a military family, Andrew spent most of his time abroad until the age of 18.

“We spent a lot of time in Malta, we also did Hong Kong, but otherwise it’s always been Dorset,” he says.

“We always come back to Dorset and I think ‘I love it here’. We’ve got a county that’s so diverse.”

It was an unfortunate sequence of events in 2002 which initially set Andrew, who now lives in Wimborne, on the path to becoming a writer.

“I slipped two discs in my back,” he remembers.

“I couldn’t work for nearly five weeks and the only comfortable position was sitting, so I would write in between physiotherapy and that’s what really got me started.

“The story I had had rattling around in my head for many, many years.”

Andrew took around two years to write The Constantine Legacy, only ever intended to be a one-off novel, an another 18 months sourcing a publisher. He has since had four books published and is part-way through writing his fifth.

It’s very much a family affair – Andrew’s wife and his two daughters all read the books and one of his daughters, also a model, features on the front cover of his latest novel The Chimera Code.

Feedback from family and fans alike has been good, with most readers agreeing the main character, Jake Dillon, is a likeable guy.

Andrew admits there are some similarities between the novels’ resident hero and himself.

“Jake Dillon is a scuba diver – I’ve done lots of scuba diving in the past, so I could relate to that. My grandfather was a military policeman, my other grandfather was a major in the Devon and Dorset regiment, my uncle was a tank commander and my father was a gun commander – Jake Dillon is a former Army Intelligence Officer.

“I’ve never killed anyone though – Jake Dillon does quite a lot of that. We all have an alter ego. I don’t believe I have a huge ego in real life, so I leave it for the pages. It’s a much better option – people don’t like a big head.”

With the series of books achieving greater success that Andrew had ever dreamed, is he temped to jack in the day job?

“It’s just a hobby,” he smiles.

“By keeping it that way you can enjoy it. I love it. It’s got to be fun. If it’s not fun, there’s no point in it.”

  • All four of Andrew’s books, The Constantine Legacy, Dead Men Don’t Bite, Shroud of Concealment and The Chimera Code, are available on amazon.co.uk in paperback and for Kindle