The Ripper file

Meet Nick Rippington, creator of the Boxer Boys gangster thriller series

 
HI I'M NICK, but my friends call me Rippers, among other names that would be unprintable on this website.
I am the author of an acclaimed UK gangland thriller series called The Boxer Boys which follows the trials and tribulations of two East London families over a period of 50 years.
Until I quit the day job at the end of 2025, I was a national sports journalist with a wealth of experience, responsible for some of those witty headlines at the Daily Star.
Another claim to infamy is that I was the last Welsh Sports Editor of the now defunct News of the World. Despite that, I can assure you that I missed all the phone-hacking courses and most of the time can’t even remember my own passcode.
I started writing my first novel just after I was informed while on holiday that Rupert Murdock was cutting his losses and I was out of work. Not only that but because our offices had been designated a crime scene, I would never be able to enter them again. Instead, I collected a black bin bag of my possessions from a colleague in a Wapping car park in a shady scene that wouldn’t look out of place in one of my novels.
Crossing The Whitewash launched the Boxer Boys series in 2015, carrying the suspense from London to rugby-mad Wales against the backdrop of a Rugby World Cup, and received an honourable mention in the Writers' Digest self-published eBook Awards. Judges described it as "evocative, original, unfailingly precise and often humourous".
It was followed by Spark Out, a prequel, then Dying Seconds and Bare Lies, which took the action to the Costa Brava in Spain. My most recent release The Jagged Scar goes right back to the origin of the story in early 1970s Soho.
I have also published a standalone psychological thriller Rabette Run, which has been described as ‘Alice in Wonderland... with tanks and guns’.
Originally from Bristol, I now live in Suffolk with my wife Liz and youngest daughter Olivia.