After a long silence, I want to share this….. I have FINISHED! It has taken me an age, but WITCHFINDER – my political-espionage thriller – has reached the copy edit stage and has a publication slot at the end of October next year. I have sweated blood on this one. Like my other books, it is based on real people and events – the hunt for the mole at the top of the British intelligence services that was conducted by Peter Wright and his allies in MI5. Wright’s own self-serving, mendacious account of the investigation – Spycatcher – caused a sensation when it was published in 1987.
Former MI5 intelligence officer, Peter Wright (right) with his lawyer, Malcolm Turnbull, a future Prime Minister of Australia.
Turnbull defended Wright’s publisher against the British government’s attempts to suppress Spycatcher.
I don’t have the cover art for Witchfinder yet, but my Editor at Hodder, Nick, has written some general copy.
Winter, 1963. Harry Vaughan is recalled from Vienna to London and a Secret Intelligence Service left in
shock by the defection of Kim Philby – the latest in a series of high-profile betrayals by British agents working for the Russians.
Previous defectors, such as Burgess and Maclean, were clearly tipped off by Philby that it was time to run. Now the question in danger of paralyzing the Service is: who tipped off Philby? Harry is to join a review, led by technical analyst Peter Wright.
While Harry might be called one of the cavaliers at MI6, Wright is a roundhead. Subservient to the all-powerful Americans, suspicious to the point of paranoia, convinced that the culture of old-school-tie loyalties is rotten throughout, Wright is obsessed by the search for traitors.
Harry thinks Wright is more likely to destroy the Service than to save it… but is he hiding a more personal motive for trying to stop the investigation?
A powerful, suspenseful story of the claustrophobic intelligence world that builds towards a brilliantly engineered climax, WITCHFINDER also paints a compelling picture of a city and a society caught between the end of the War and the beginning of the Swinging Sixties.
More soon.