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David Whitehead is one of the most prolific and important British western writers of the last twenty years, whose work has appeared under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms, including Ben Bridges, Glenn Lockwood, Matt Logan, Doug Thorne, Carter West and Janet Whitehead. He was born in East London in 1958 and grew to share his father's passion for western movies at a very early age. From there the young Whitehead moved on to reading the western novels of J T Edson, Marshall Grover and George G Gilman. In 1976, his first meeting with Gilman (real name Terry Harknett), author of the popular "Edge" and "Adam Steele" westerns of the 1970s and 80s, and arguably the most prominent member of the so-called "Picadilly Cowboys" (a group of British western writers whose dubious claim to fame was that they had never been further west than Picadilly, in London's West End) saw him create a fan club for western fiction enthusiasts. Three years later he became a consultant on IPC Magazines' impressive but ultimately short-lived Western Magazine (1979-80, 4 issues).
By his own estimate, Whitehead wrote nineteen books before he received his first acceptance with The Silver Trail (as by Ben Bridges) in 1984. This book was originally written as part of a series aimed at the then-buoyant Norwegian western market and its central character was a cigar-chewing, ill-tempered, one-eyed ex Pinkerton operative named Logan Tyree. Although this too was rejected, Whitehead considered it to be his best effort to date, and eventually established western writer Peter Watts (a.k.a. Matt Chisholm, Cy James, Luke Jones) offered to read it and tell him where he was going wrong.
Recovering from a back injury in 1984, Whitehead decided to rewrite the book according to Watts' suggestions and the result was eventually accepted for the Black Horse Western line published by London-based Robert Hale Limited. It was published in 1986. Logan Tyree was replaced by a more heroic soldier of fortune called Carter O'Brien, who went on to become Whitehead's best-known recurring character. O'Brien most recently appeared for the fourteenth time in Draw Down the Lightning (2007).
A great many of his books have been series - the Judge and Dury westerns and the adventures of former Pinkerton detective Luke Heller under his own name, a trilogy recounting the life and times of reluctant gunfighter Ash Colter under the name "Matt Logan", and Apacheria, a series featuring the adventures of a band of so-called "Galvanised Yankees" (Confederate prisoners of war who were released during the War Between the States (1861-65) on condition that they go west and re-establish law and order in Arizona Territory, co-written with historian Link Hullar under the name "Carter West". Other potential series, such as Coffin Creek and The Spurlock Gun(as by Matt Logan) failed to materialise. The author has also written a number of stand-alone westerns, romances and war stories for Commando, a digest-sized war comic published by D C Thomson & Co Ltd of Dundee, Scotland.
In 1991, Whitehead acted as a consultant on the second edition Twentieth Century Western Writers (St James Press). In reviewing the work of more than fifty western writers he made the single largest contribution to the book. In reviewing Whitehead's own work in the same volume, B J Holmes noted that Whitehead's westerns were marked by "crisp action scenes, pounding narrative, well-realised characterisation, a hard-hitting, racy style," and concluded that he "continues to carry the standard of the new generation of western writing with pace, atmosphere and momentum: he is well worth the time of lovers of the genre."
Whitehead lives in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England.