When Melvin was a child he wanted to be the man who collected wild animals for the zoo. Since that wasn't to be, he has to make do with two cats and a parrot called Henry.

Melvin was brought up in Sussex and Berkshire. He loved reading, especially animal stories such as The Wind in the Willows, and books by Gerald Durrell such as My Family and Other Animals. He also loved fantasies, for example Tolkein's The Hobbit and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. Melvin was not much good at school but then, when he was 12, an English teacher gave him an A for a story he had written and at that point he realised that he wanted to be a writer.

Melvin's books are always challenging and hard-hitting, whether they are about the savage realities of the countryside and the ways of animals, or the ways in which humans are cruel, corrupt or self-harming. When The Cry of the Wolf was published he was hailed as 'the shocker of the 90s' because he wrote so powerfully about the battle of wits and strength between a wolf and his hunter.