Making Enemies

Faber and Faber 2009, Paperback, 414 pages, £15.00

Making Enemies, by Francis Bennett

Making Enemies is the first volume in Francis Bennett’s Cold War trilogy, which is being reissued in Faber Finds.

It centres around the race for the hydrogen bomb in 1947, a deadly global game of institutionalized deceit and lies in which human life is the cheapest commodity of all. Brilliantly evoking the paranoid and mutual mistrust of those early days of the Cold War this novel was widely acclaimed on first publication.

One critic said, ‘Le Carre could not have done it better.’

• Read the introduction by the author

Secret Kingdom

Faber and Faber 2009, Paperback, 318 pages, £15.00

Secret Kingdom, by Francis Bennett

Secret Kingdom is the second novel in Francis Bennett’s Cold War Trilogy. The first novel was set in 1947, this one at another pivotal moment in the Cold War, the summer and autumn of 1956, in the tense months leading up to the Hungarian uprising.

Bobby Martineau, a member of the British SIS, has been posted to Budapest, from where he reports to London about the growing crisis; to his increasing dismay his warnings are ignored. The Hungarians, he knows, are prepared to risk their lives against the Soviet oppressors because they believe the West will support them. But they, and Martineau, reckon without the cynical jockeying for position that is going on in London where whole nations can be sacrificed on the altar of career opportunity. Martineau’s dilemma is exacerbated by his deepening relationship with the beautiful Eva, a woman well-known to both Russian and Hungarian security forces, and with plenty of reasons for hating the regime.

‘The Cold War here is not just a political but also psychological landscape … In picking out a personal history from the greater tapestry unfolding in the background Bennett has produced a literary thriller of considerable merit.’ Peter Millar, The Times

Dr Berlin

Faber and Faber 2009, Paperback, 414 pages, £15.00

Dr Berlin, by Francis Bennett

Like the first two Dr Berlin centres around a pivotal moment in the Cold War: the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. As one reviewer of this book remarked, ‘the Iron Curtain had become concrete’.

Dr Berlin is a successful academic at the Moscow Institute of History and leads the privileged life of a Party member. But he is also the secret servant of a corrupt regime, an informer who betrays his friends and colleagues alike. Sickened by his own weakness, weary of his life of deception, he is trapped in a morally empty world where he plays his part in manufacturing the lies that conflict with what he knows is true. On the eve of departure to lecture at Cambridge University, he is asked by a disillusioned faction in the Soviet military to deliver a message to the West in the hope of preventing the conflict expected throughout the world. Can he redeem his life of deception through one courageous act?

‘This is another rare piece of subtle and complex storytelling, an excellent continuation in Bennett’s Trollope-like chronicling of the Cold War years.’ Peter Millar, The Times

Free Country

Simon & Schuster Ltd 2010, Hardcover, 336 pages, £19.99

Free Country, by Jeremy Duns

May 1, 1969. Blackmailed into serving Moscow, double agent Paul Dark now finds himself a target for both exposure, and assassination. Desperate to escape his predicament, Dark gambles everything on one last throw of the dice, exposing his Soviet handler to the British. But before long, he finds he has no choice but to go on the run again, and the race is on to stop a deadly conspiracy that dates back to the early years of the Cold War.

The second part of the Paul Dark trilogy, Free Country is another sweat-soaked Sixties-set spy thriller in the tradition of Len Deighton and Frederick Forsyth.

From Russia With Love

One of the defining books of the Cold War (and one of President Kennedy’s favourite books) From Russia With Love is perhaps even more enjoyable to read now than when it first became a huge international bestseller.

The Achilles Heel, by Reg Gadney

The time is now. An enquiry agent, known as Angell, is hired by the glamorous wife of the century’s greatest philanthropist and financier, to terminate the investigation of her husband’s secret crimes of child abuse and murder. Simultaneously, Alan Rosslyn, a young undercover investigation officer in HM Customs and Excise is surprised to be asked by ‘C’ – the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service – to abort his pursuit of the manufacturers of the worst pornography ever seen. Rosslyn’s refusal to compromise hurls him into the hunt for Angell. The Achilles Heel is an odyssey of suspense and violence, a contest undertaken in the shadows of international intrigue. In ingenuity and brilliance and credibility it matches Reg Gadney’s other bestselling thrillers.

Kolymsky Heights, by Lionel Davidson

Kolymsky Heights. A Siberian permafrost hell lost in endless nights, the perfect setting for an underground Russian research station. It’s a place so secret it doesn’t officially exist; once there, the scientists are forbidden to leave. But one scientist is desperate to get a message to the outside world. So desperate, he sends a plea across the wildness to the West in order to summon the one man alive capable of achieving the impossible …

Fast-moving, exhilarating and starring a highly unusual hero, Kolymsky Heights is an unforgettable thriller with a spectacular denouement.

‘A breathless story of fear and courage.’ Daily Telegraph

Swan Song, by T. J. Binyon

1970s Moscow. Vanya Morozov is a teacher of English Literature. Not a party member, he views life and politics with a detached irony, and his main aim is to lead a quiet life. That is until his past starts to catch up with him.

Twelve years earlier he and three other students spent an intense summer in the country. Since then their paths diverged – Tanya became a passionate film director; Alik an ambitious careerist and rising star in the KGB; and Lyuba, dreamy and idealistic, caught up in a strange underground movement.

As a bureaucratic power struggle turns into something darker, the four are drawn together once again, as the Western Intelligence Agencies are alerted. As the action shifts from Moscow to Leningrad and finally to the snow-covered forests of the Volgoda regions, Vanya is forced to abandon his detachment and fight for his survival, and that of the girl he loves.

The Private Sector, by Joseph Hone

Eric Ambler, John Buchan, Erskine Childers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, Len Deighton, Ian Fleming, Frederick Forsyth, Graham Greene, Geoffrey Household, John le Carre, Robert Ludlum and Joseph Hone. What do they have in common? They wrote spy thrillers and all have appeared in a recent survey of the fifty best books in that genre. Although he may be the least known, the inclusion of Joseph Hone was not eccentric. The particular title chosen was The Private Sector, the first of his Peter Marlow titles. The author and the title are fully deserving of this accolade.

‘Joe Hone is a marvelously compelling, acute and subtle writer of spy novels. The “Peter Marlow” sequence should be rediscovered and acclaimed as enduring classics of the genre.’ William Boyd

The time is May, 1967 in the weeks leading up to the Arab/Israeli six day war. The place is Cairo. The story is Peter Marlow’s, an Irish teacher and secret agent sent from London to find his friend and fellow spy, Henry Edwards who has vanished from Cairo. During the course of this fool’s errand, he also finds his former wife, Bridget, who is now deeply involved with Edwards both emotionally and professionally. Marlow moves easily in British and Egyptian intelligence branches, attaching his allegiance to neither until he becomes the unwitting victim of a failed plot to topple Nasser.

Credible and dramatic, this is a story of callous political and human intrigue and of a mission which can only succeed if none of the men return.

He knew the woman he loved had poisoned her first husband. He knew someone was blackmailing her – and now he knew she had taken her own life with a drug overdose.  The one thing he didn’t know was the identity of the mystery blackmailer…

But the evening post brought Roger this last scrap of information. But before he’d finished reading the letter, Roger was dead – stabbed through the neck where he sat in his study…

Poirot is called to upon to investigate the murder of Roger Ackroyd, a man with an intriguing story.  He’d been courting Mrs Ferrars, a wealthy widow, who had recently died of a suspected suicide by overdose.  To solve the murder of Roger Ackroyd, Poirot realises he must delve deeper into the circumstances surrounding Mrs Ferrars’ demise.

The New York Times said of this book, “There are doubtless many detective stories more exciting and blood curdling than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd but this reviewer has recently read very few which provide greater analytical stimulation.”

The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, by Gilbert Adair

Boxing Day circa 1935. A snowed-in manor on the very edge of Dartmoor. A Christmas house-party. And overhead, in the attic, the dead body of Raymond Gentry, gossip columnist and blackmailer, shot through the heart. But the attic door is locked from the inside, its sole window is traversed by thick iron bars and, naturally, there is no sign of a murderer or a murder weapon.

Fortunately (though, for the murderer, unfortunately), one of the guests is the formidable Evadne Mount, the bestselling author of countless classic whodunits. In fact, were she not its presiding sleuth, The Act of Roger Murgatroyd is exactly the type of whodunit she herself might have written . . .

A Mysterious Affair of Style, by Gilbert Adair

London 1946. A decade may have passed since she solved the ffolkes Manor murder case narrated in The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, but Evadne Mount, herself the irrepressible author of countless bestselling whodunits, has aged as little as most fictional sleuths tend to do. And here she is again, in A Mysterious Affair of Style, seconded as ever by her loyal, long-suffering partner-in-detection, Chief-Inspector Trubshawe, formerly of Scotland Yard, on the trail of an even more fiendishly ingenious killer.

An actress is poisoned, not just on camera but in full view of a crowded film set. Only five people had an opportunity to administer the poison – yet not one of them had a conceivable motive. As Evadne Mount discovers, however, when she applies her not-so-little grey cells to the crime, each of them is implicated in a web of deceit whose lethal ramifications extend far beyond the confines of the studio in which the murder was committed.

For those readers who are already familiar with Gilbert Adair’s The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, this hugely entertaining new homage to the Golden Age of English murder mysteries and its most celebrated practitioner will, as they say, need no introduction. For those who are not, welcome to the world of Evadne Mount.

And Then There Was No One, by Gilbert Adair

Gustav Slavorigin, Booker Prize-winning novelist and notorious controversialist, is murdered in the picturesque Swiss town of Meiringen during its annual Sherlock Holmes Festival.

Since the price of a hundred million dollars has been placed on his head by an ultra-reactionary Texan billionaire, none of the festival’s guests can be regarded as above suspicion – save perhaps Evadne Mount, the formidable amateur sleuth who featured prominently in Gilbert Adair’s The Act of Roger Murgatroyd and A Mysterious Affair of Style. Yet neither of those two cases prepared her for the jaw-dropping twists and turns of this new investigation, climaxing, appropriately enough, at Meiringen’s principal tourist attraction, the Reichenbach Falls.

As the reader gradually discovers, however, And Then There Was No One is much more than the third panel of a triptych of detective stories. It’s a novel like no other, a hall of mirrors, a hole-in-one, a tour de force of stylistic brio and narrative ingenuity, a conjuring act that ends with the conjuror, or author, actually sawing himself in half.

A House in Order, by Nigel Dennis

Admired by people as diverse as the American writer Diane Johnson and the British journalist Rod Liddle, this, the final novel of Nigel Dennis, should be better known. It is a short parable about how to make order out of chaos. The chaos is a third world war. The protagonist claims to be a cartographer, is suspected of being a spy and is most certainly a busy and dedicated coward. His world in the midst of war is a greenhouse, a privileged position for a prisoner who wants to keep out of things. All he wants to do is tend his plants through the long wicked winter. But he is persuaded to take a fatal and decisive role in the bickering rivalries between the captors who are themselves half afraid of his monumental fear.

Making Enemies, by Francis Bennett

Making Enemies is the first volume in Francis Bennett’s Cold War trilogy, which is being reissued in Faber Finds.

It centres around the race for the hydrogen bomb in 1947, a deadly global game of institutionalized deceit and lies in which human life is the cheapest commodity of all. Brilliantly evoking the paranoid and mutual mistrust of those early days of the Cold War this novel was widely acclaimed on first publication.

One critic said, ‘Le Carre could not have done it better.’

Secret Kingdom, by Francis Bennett

Secret Kingdom is the second novel in Francis Bennett’s Cold War Trilogy. The first novel was set in 1947, this one at another pivotal moment in the Cold War, the summer and autumn of 1956, in the tense months leading up to the Hungarian uprising.

Bobby Martineau, a member of the British SIS, has been posted to Budapest, from where he reports to London about the growing crisis; to his increasing dismay his warnings are ignored. The Hungarians, he knows, are prepared to risk their lives against the Soviet oppressors because they believe the West will support them. But they, and Martineau, reckon without the cynical jockeying for position that is going on in London where whole nations can be sacrificed on the altar of career opportunity. Martineau’s dilemma is exacerbated by his deepening relationship with the beautiful Eva, a woman well-known to both Russian and Hungarian security forces, and with plenty of reasons for hating the regime.

‘The Cold War here is not just a political but also psychological landscape … In picking out a personal history from the greater tapestry unfolding in the background Bennett has produced a literary thriller of considerable merit.’ Peter Millar, The Times

Dr Berlin, by Francis Bennett

Like the first two Dr Berlin centres around a pivotal moment in the Cold War: the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. As one reviewer of this book remarked, ‘the Iron Curtain had become concrete’.

Dr Berlin is a successful academic at the Moscow Institute of History and leads the privileged life of a Party member. But he is also the secret servant of a corrupt regime, an informer who betrays his friends and colleagues alike. Sickened by his own weakness, weary of his life of deception, he is trapped in a morally empty world where he plays his part in manufacturing the lies that conflict with what he knows is true. On the eve of departure to lecture at Cambridge University, he is asked by a disillusioned faction in the Soviet military to deliver a message to the West in the hope of preventing the conflict expected throughout the world. Can he redeem his life of deception through one courageous act?

‘This is another rare piece of subtle and complex storytelling, an excellent continuation in Bennett’s Trollope-like chronicling of the Cold War years.’ Peter Millar, The Times

The Twisted Heart, by Rebecca Gowers

When Kit goes to a dance class she is hoping simply to take her mind off her studies. Soon it looks like Joe, a stranger she meets there, might do more than that. But when Kit uncovers a mystery involving the young Charles Dickens and the slaughter of a prostitute known as The Countess, she is sucked back in to the world of books, and discovers how Dickens became tangled up with this horrendous crime.

The White Queen, by Philippa Gregory

The first in a stunning new series, The Cousins War, is set amid the tumult and intrigue of The War of the Roses. Internationally bestselling author Philippa Gregory brings this family drama to colourful life through its women, beginning with the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen.

The White Queen tells the story of a common woman who ascends to royalty by virtue of her beauty, a woman who rises to the demands of her position and fights tenaciously for the success of her family, a woman whose two sons become the central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the Princes in the Tower whose fate remains unknown to this day. From her uniquely qualified perspective, Philippa Gregory explores the most famous unsolved mystery, informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable storytelling skills.

The Rossetti Letter, by Christi Phillips

In seventeenth century Venice, Alessandra Rossetti, a courtesan, becomes entangled in a dangerous political intrigue that threatens to destroy the Venetian Republic. She alone has the power to reveal a Spanish plot. But to do so would threaten the life of the one she loves.

Centuries later, postgraduate student Claire Donovan is writing her dissertation on the young courtesan. She has discovered that Alessandra wrote a secret letter to the Venetian Council exposing the Spanish conspiracy. But until now, no one knows how Alessandra learned of the plot, or what happened to her once it was revealed. Claire hopes that she will uncover the secrets of the young courtesan’s life within the heart of Venice’s ancient libraries and prove Alessandra deserves her place in history.

But upon arrival in Venice, Claire learns that Cambridge professor Andrew Kent is to present a paper on The Spanish Conspiracy, asserting that Alessandra was a co-conspirator of the Spanish. If he can prove his theory, all of Claire’s work – and her academic career – will be ruined. She knows she must discover the facts of Alessandra’s role in order to save her own future. And as she races to find the truth, the boundless beauty and romance of the old city will also bring the passion back into Claire’s own life.

The Blackest Bird, by Joel Rose

Sweltering New York City, summer of 1841, the beautiful ‘Segar Girl’ Mary Rogers is brutally murdered. Popular amongst the journalistic and publishing elite, the task of finding her killer falls to High Constable Jacob Hays. At the end of a long and distinguished career Old Hays’s investigation will ultimately span a decade, involving gang wars, grave robbing, and clues hidden in the poems of the hopeless romantic and minstrel of the night, Edgar Allan Poe. Superbly researched and compellingly readable, The Blackest Bird is both a richly textured and atmospheric portrait of the birth of New York, a city raging with bloodshed and duplicity, and a thrilling murder mystery.

An Expert in Murder, by Nicola Upson

An Expert in Murder is the first in a brilliant and original new series which features crime writer Josephine Tey as its lead character.

It is March 1934, and Josephine is travelling from Scotland to London for the final week of her celebrated play Richard of Bordeaux – but joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with murder.

Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to the play. Richard of Bordeaux has been the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes which strike a chord in a world still haunted by war, but now it seems that Josephine could become the victim of her own success, as her reputation – and even her life – are put at risk.

A second murder confirms Penrose’s suspicions that somewhere among this flamboyant theatre set is a ruthless and spiteful killer. As his investigations lead him from the romance of the West End to the stark reality of the trenches, he and Josephine must confront their own ghosts in a search for someone who will stop at nothing to right the wrongs of a past generation.

Cleverly blending elements of the Golden Age author’s real life with a fictional murder mystery, An Expert in Murder is both a tribute to one of the most enduringly popular writers of crime and a richly atmospheric detective novel in its own right.

Angel With Two Faces, by Nicola Upson

Summer, 1935. Inspector Archie Penrose has invited Josephine Tey to his family home in Cornwall, a struggling but beautiful country estate on a magnificent stretch of coastline. Still haunted by the dark events of the year before – depicted in An Expert in Murder – and disillusioned with the London stage, Josephine is ready to begin work on her second mystery novel and finds much to inspire her in the landscape and its legends – in particular, a lake on the estate which is said to claim a life every seven years, and the nearby Minack Theatre, an open-air auditorium which overlooks the sea.

But death clouds the holiday from the outset: Josephine’s arrival coincides with the funeral of a young estate worker, killed in a mysterious riding accident, and another local boy disappears shortly afterwards. When the Minack proves to be a stage for real-life tragedy and an audacious murder, Archie’s loyalties are divided between his friends and his job. He and Josephine must confront the violent reality which lies beneath a seemingly idyllic community – a community with one face turned towards the present, and another looking back to the crimes of the past.

Two For Sorrow, by Nicola Upson

London, 1903. Two women are hanged in Holloway Prison for killing babies. More than thirty years later, their crimes resurface with shocking consequences… When Josephine Tey sets out to write a novel about Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, the notorious Finchley baby farmers, she can have little idea that the research for her book will be needed to help solve a modern-day killing – the sadistic murder of a young seamstress, found dead in the Motley sisters’ studio, amid preparations for a star-studded charity gala. The girl’s death seems to be the result of a long-standing domestic feud, but Josephine’s friend, Inspector Archie Penrose, is unconvinced; and when a second young woman is involved in an horrific accident soon afterwards, the search begins for a vicious killer who will stop at nothing to keep the past where it belongs. Moving between the decadence and glamour of a private women’s club, the bleak surroundings of Holloway prison, and the deprivation of London’s slums, Two for Sorrow is a dark and unsettling exploration of the way in which the crimes of the past destroy those left behind – long after justice is done.

Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is considered to be the original and the best private investigator – but that’s not to say he hasn’t got any competition. Here are some other books that you should check out if you enjoyed The Big Sleep and Chandler’s other Marlow tales, Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Good-bye.

Bone in the Throat, by Anthony Bourdain

A modern take on American noir: All is not well at the Dreadnought Grill . . . the chef has a smack habit, the owner has been set up by the FBI and in the midst of this, the sous-chef Tommy is just trying to do his job. As depraved as it is hilarious, Anthony Bourdain’s first novel is street smart and spiced with drugged-up savvy, foul-mouthed feds and salty mob speak. With a cast of unforgettables like the hitman who covers himself in clingfilm to avoid leaving fingerprints and a plot with more twists than a plate of spaghetti, Bone in the Throat rocks through the streets of Manhattan at a blistering pace.

Loser’s Town, by Daniel Depp

Summoned to the trailer of a Hollywood star who’s receiving death threats, former stuntman-turned-private investigator, David Spandau, assumes this will be another routine case. It turns out to be anything but. A-list actor Bobby Dye has become entangled with B-list gangster Richie Stella, who just wants to make a movie – and you can’t make a movie without a star. But as Richie and his cohorts are about to find out, the movie business makes the cocaine and heroin racket look like child’s play. Meanwhile, Spandau finds himself drawn ever deeper into the crazy world of Bobby Dye, one of the handsomest, most idolized men on the planet – and also one of the loneliest. All Bobby wants is someone to talk honestly to him – but can he really cope with the blunt and bitter truth?

Greenwich Killing Time, by Kinky Friedman

Greenwich Killing Time marked the debut of the Kinkster, the wise-cracking, cigar-smoking, cat-loving sleuth. The scene of the crime is Greenwich Village. The corpse is found holding eleven pink roses – and the suspects are as strange as the crime. A wild and witty journey into the dark heart of Manhattan, this novel remains the perfect introduction to America’s most outrageous singer-songwriter turned gumshoe detective – and if you enjoy it, there are plenty more stories to check out.