Roderick Gordon is the author of the Tunnels series of books. Born in 1960, he grew up in Highgate, North London, and eventually went to University College where he dabbled in genetics and listened to Joy Division. After graduating without the faintest idea what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, he spent some time in the wilderness when he played in a few bands, then somehow fell into a job doing corporate finance for an investment bank in the City of London. He genuinely thought this was all that the future held for him until he was made redundant in 2001.
But Roderick surprised himself by working on a book with help from an old university friend and, in 2005, he self-published it as The Highfield Mole, which caught the attention of Barry Cunningham, founder of Chicken House, a publisher of children’s books. Following a period of editing, Barry republished it as Tunnels in July 2007. After intense media interest around its launch, Tunnels was published in almost forty countries and was a New York Times Bestseller, achieving sales of more than a million copies worldwide. Shortly after publication the film rights were purchased by US-based Relativity Media, and Mikael Håfström has been appointed as director. Roderick followed Tunnels with further books in the series, Deeper, Freefall, Closer, Spiral and, finally, Terminal in 2013.