A CRIME writer from Oxfordshire has produced a collection of gripping short stories for adults who are not 'confident' readers.

Harry Bingham, who lives near Chipping Norton, and writes in an office in Charlbury, has gathered tales by fellow crime writers to create Dead Simple.

The father-of-four helped to produce the collection of murderous yarns for Quick Reads, an annual initiative run by The Reading Agency to get more people reading.

Mr Bingham, 49, said: "A lot of people struggle with the written word.

"It could be that English is their second language or that they have dyslexia or it may be that they didn’t succeed in mainstream education.

"This isn’t just for people who have learning challenges - a lot of people want to read and they don’t want to read books aimed at children.

"People will watch the same films as anybody else and have no problems engaging with complicated narratives – it’s just the narrow issue of sentences on the page.

"I just thought it sounded like an amazing project - I was asked to do it by my publisher, Orion.

"I started asking crime writers I know and got a load of really positive responses."

Dead Simple, published last week, includes original short stories from well-known crime writers across the UK, including Mr Bingham himself, Mark Billingham, Clare Mackintosh, James Oswald, Jane Casey and others.

Mr Bingham said: "It's just a great project - the hope that is readers will get engaged by a few Quick Read books and it will be the first step at the start of a much longer journey."

Quick Reads titles are specifically designed to be easy to read, and are shorter and easier to tackle for adults who are less confident in their reading.

The book costs £1 and is available at amzn.to/2l0LDyk

Mr Bingham is best known for his series of novels about the detective Fiona Griffiths.