Before I Go To Sleep

Doubleday 2011, Hardcover, 368 pages, £12.99

‘As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me …’

Welcome to Christine’s life.

A question from Katy Noyes on the TV Book Club Facebook Group: Where does the writing process begin? ‘The big idea’? Chapter one? A character?

I think maybe it’s a combination of things. Ideas come and go, but sometimes one will stick and will keep calling the writer back. With Before I Go to Sleep Christine’s character came to me when I imagined her looking in a mirror, and I suppose the ‘big idea’ was to write her story in the first person, but I suspect every book is different.

A question from Samantha on channel4.com/tvbookclub: Where and how do you engage in the writing of your work?

I wrote Before I Go to Sleep while working part-time in the NHS, so as well as writing pretty solidly on my ‘writing days’ I used to grab the odd hour whenever I could at weekends and in the evenings. I’m not a great believer in the rituals around writing – I think it’s important to remember that really one can write anywhere and with any instrument – so while a lot of the book was written either at my dining room table or at the library in The Barbican, a huge amount was written on trains, in various hotel rooms and in a not insignificant number of cafes and bars!

A question from Mez on channel4.com/tvbookclub: Who or what has influenced your style of writing?

That’s such a difficult question to answer! Other writers have the biggest influence of course, and it feels that almost every book I read can have an influence in some small way. For me writing is a learning process; it isn’t something that one day I learned how to do. Every book I read can teach me something.

A question from Jo Baines on the TV Book Club Facebook Group: Do you feel it’s inevitable that an author’s life experiences will influence their writing or is it possible to write a book that is pure imagination and creative process?

That’s an interesting question! When I wrote Before I Go to Sleep I thought it was pure invention and as far away from my life as it was possible to be. Of course now I have a little distance from the writing of the book I can see that the book is totally entwined with my life and there are elements of autobiography everywhere. So I’m not sure! I think the writers’ own life will always colour the work, even if it’s only inasmuch as it influences what he or she chooses to write about.

A question from Ali on channel4.com/tvbookclub: My GCSE English teacher told me (a few years ago now), that when authors write a book they know exactly what the plot is, and wouldn’t start without knowing what the end will be. I’ve always found this difficult to believe; is it true!?

No. There are as many different ways of writing a book as there are books to be written, and everyone is different. I had no idea how Before I Go to Sleep would end when I began to write it, and I know I’m not alone in that. Some authors plan everything meticulously before they begin, and some don’t. There isn’t a right and wrong way to write.

How old were you when you had your first book published, and what were you doing before you were a writer?

Before I Go to Sleep is my first book, and I’d just turned 40 when it came out. Before I became a full-time writer I worked in the NHS – with children who have a hearing loss.

A question from the TV Book Club Facebook Group: In a crowded market many authors don’t get published; what’s the secret of your success?

I think there was an element of luck, in that I’d made some changes to my life in order to be able to devote more time to writing and at the same time a subject matter came to me that I found interesting and felt would make a good novel, but ultimately I think my ‘secret’ is that I worked really hard! There aren’t any shortcuts. A novel is written a word at a time, and it’s not always fun. I just had persistence!

A question inspired by Yaisa’s suggestion on channel4.com/tvbookclub: How much research do you have to do, which are the most difficult types of scenes to research, and have you ever had to go to extreme or unusual lengths to research a scene?

I did a fair bit of research for Before I Go to Sleep as I wanted it to be as medically and scientifically accurate as it could be, and I also wanted to try to understand what it must be like living with a memory problem. So most of my research was around that. But also there’s a lot of observation involved, and I’m always looking for details. Everywhere I go I’m thinking ‘What makes this café different?’ or ‘How could I bring that person to life on the page? What is unique about them?’ I’ve never really gone to extreme lengths to research a scene, though for my new book I might have to!

What’s the most outlandish idea you’ve ever had for a storyline, and has it made it into one of your books?

I couldn’t possibly say! I might want to use it one day…. Sorry!

And another question from the TV Book Club Facebook Group: What do you think of e-readers and would you ever consider providing additional content for readers who use them (e.g. pictures, video clips, web links)?

I like my e-reader, though it will never replace physical books for me. I love collecting them, and I love the way they change as you read them. The paper creases, the spine bends. A well thumbed book becomes like an old friend. But throughout history writers have had to adapt to different formats, and the potential for e-readers is exciting. I’d never rule out making more material available for those that enjoy consuming their books on screen.

A Serpent Uncoiled

Headline 2012, Paperback, 480 pages, £8.99

A missing mobster. A bizarre spiritualist society. And three deaths, linked by a chilling forensic detail.

Working as an enforcer in London’s criminal underworld brought Dan Shaper to the edge of a breakdown. Now he’s a private investigator, kept perilously afloat by a growing cocktail of drugs. He needs to straighten-up and rebuild his life, but instead gets the attention of his old gangland masters and a job-offer from Mr George Glass. The elderly eccentric claims to be a New Age Messiah, but now needs a saviour of his own. He’s been marked for murder.

Adrift amidst liars and thugs, Shaper must push his capsizing mind to its limits: stalked not only by a unique and terrifying killer, but by the ghosts of his own brutal past.

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Tideline

Simon & Schuster Ltd 2012, Hardcover, 352 pages, £12.99

One winter’s afternoon, voice coach Sonia opens the door of her beautiful riverside home to fifteen-year-old Jez, the nephew of a family friend. He’s come to borrow some music. Sonia invites him in and soon decides that she isn’t going to let him leave.

As Sonia’s desire to keep Jez hidden and protected from the outside world becomes all the more overpowering, she is haunted by memories of an intense teenage relationship, which gradually reveal a terrifying truth. The River House, Sonia’s home since childhood, holds secrets within its walls. And outside, on the shores of the Thames, new ones are coming in on the tide…

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Gallic Books will publish three novels by Pascal Garnier in 2012: The Panda Theory, How’s the Pain? andThe A26. In an article for his French publisher, Zulma, Garnier described what led him to become a writer:

According to my birth certificate, I was born on 4^th July 1949 in the 14^th arrondissement of Paris. I can’t say I remember the event, but let’s assume that’s how it happened. Afterwards came a normal childhood in what you’d call the average French family – which felt more and more average the more it dawned on me that I’d been sold a world with no user’s manual, lured in by false advertising. When I was about fifteen, the state education system and I agreed to go our separate ways. I’d had enough, I was suffocating, convinced that real life was going on somewhere else. So off I went in search of it. In those days you could still travel freely through North Africa, the Middle and Far East. With my head in the clouds, I roamed about for a decade or so until I came to see that it really is a very small world and, being round, you always end up back where you started.

That’s when the wife and baby came along. All around me, the faithful companions I’d met along the way were nestling back into their kennels, burying their dreams and delusions like bones to gnaw at in years to come when they were old and toothless. Rebelling against such mass surrender, I threw myself into rock and roll – and landed with a resounding thud. I was no better at being a pop star than I was at being a dad. Still, it was writing my pitiful ditties that gave me a taste for words. Deep down, I harboured a wild dream of writing something longer, something like a book. But my limited vocabulary, terrible spelling and hopeless grammar seemed like insurmountable obstacles. So I got divorced, remarried, dabbled in design for women’s magazines, took on odd jobs, got up to the occasional bit of mischief. In short, I was killing time, frittering my life away. The boredom of my childhood numbed me once again with the sweetness of a drug. I was thirty-five.

You can only escape if you’re imprisoned, which to some extent I was. I had no choice: my only way out was through a blank page. Slowly scraping along, I dug myself out through a corner of the kitchen table, and as I tunnelled my way up to the surface, I filled the hole within myself. One short story, then two, then three… And then one day I had a publisher on the phone, and not just any publisher, but POL. A collection of twelve short stories was published under the title ‘L’année sabbatique’, ‘A year’s sabbatical’. After that, another sixty-odd books were brought out by several other publishers: books for children, books for adults, books labelled as noir or white, whatever – I’ve never been interested in that particular apartheid. So there it is, a bit muddled I’ll admit. I write because, as Pessoa said: ‘Literature is proof that life is not enough’.

Pascal Garnier

I think the one piece of writing advice that really struck home was when a couple of writers were giving a talk long before I was published and an audience member asked how they had become writers. The answer was along the lines of this:

‘When we were students, all our friends wanted to be writers, the only difference between them and us now is that we kept at it and somewhere along the line, they put their pens down.’ I took from this that as a writer, that’s all you can do, keep at it, and one day, if you’re fortunate and keep trying, someone will show an interest. So simple advice to a writer – if you keep writing, you are a writer.

Which authors do you find most inspiring as a writer?

All of them! In truth, I never read a book without gaining something and being moved, touched, inspired, disappointed or enraged by some part of it. Even if I haven’t particularly enjoyed a book, it will inspire me to try something different in my own writing, even if it didn’t quite come off in the book I read, you can often see what the aim was. About individual writers, it’s the long running authors who keep producing great and interesting work, such as Lee Child, who are very inspiring. I always go back to classics by people like Thomas Harris as his works resonate still. I will re-read ‘ Red Dragon’ if I want to be reminded how effortless and brilliant a good thriller can look. I’m re-reading Othello at the moment and you can often find the greatest models of good and evil and most inspiring writing in the classics.

Do you have an audience in mind when writing, or do you just write for yourself?

I am my own audience, of course, and try to write a story I would enjoy reading. Then, when I’ve read and re-read something and I’m no longer sure if it works, I’ll try to imagine how someone else will react to it. But although I might not be writing for a specific audience, I’m always thinking of how someone without knowledge of the plot would respond to a scene. It’s hard to put yourself in that position but it helps. That said, I also write because there is an audience out there and somehow, I’m working towards their enjoyment of the book, though it may not be explicit all the time.

Where do you write, and why?

I write in the living room of our flat. It’s a busy place with my children doing their thing, people watching TV or ironing in the background, but I can concentrate most of the time. Intricate plotting needs early mornings, though. I try to write each day, either before work or late in the evening. I’ll take the second half of the question to be – why do you write rather than why do you write in the living room, if I may! I suppose I write because I always have and when I’m actually writing rather than dreading it or worrying about it, it’s the best feeling in the world (almost). I’m most at home when my mind and fingers are in the thick of a great story and the rest of the real world disappears for a short time. It’s very liberating, but when you put the pen down, getting going again can be hard so it’s best not to stop at all.

Tell us the book you most wish you had written.

Difficult question. I couldn’t enjoy reading a book I had written because the joy of reading is very different from the joy of writing. If it was my own work, I’d completely ruin all the love and passion I have for many a great book. That said, I do admire ‘Anna Karenina’ by Leo Tolstoy. I read it at an impressionable age and it provided a paternalistic wisdom and the comfort of a long narrative. Since I first read it in my late teens, I think about it often, about Levin and Kitty, of course, much more than Anna and Vronsky. Something about the structure, the characters and that particular story keeps living on in my head. I’ve only read it in translation, though, but I would love to have write an English ‘Anna Karenina’, had I the talent or the time, or indeed, both.

Bad guys are often the most enjoyable characters to write, but those in 88 Killer far exceed the realm of standard villainy. Were they still fun to write, or was it more laborious?

Difficult choice, between fun or laborious. I do like to write the bad guys and I like to understand their psychology. Reading about abnormal psychological conditions is fascinating. Seeing the limits of the human psyche is also very exciting and interesting, but I kind of agree that this particular villain had too much connection to real events in history and to real current problems to enjoy in any way. I find the kind of violence displayed that is not triggered by emotional problems or the lack of empathy, but by some ideology most difficult to understand. It was one of the reasons I wrote the book, as an exploration of political violence. So I wouldn’t say fun or laborious, I’d say it was challenging, difficult and sometimes draining but these aren’t negative things to me.

You used a proxy researcher to give your descriptions of New York greater authenticity. Are there any key things writers should look for in a proxy, or is the onus solely on them to ask the right questions?

I think that you need a good relationship with anyone who is carrying out research. A good researcher will understand what you will want to use the information for and therefore will try to work with your eyes to a degree. Quite often, I am asking open questions and I just want to get a vague sense of things or an area so that I can work more on it myself. At other times, I want something accurate and precise. I think that for the latter type of research it is easier to get answers. I remember reading something about James Joyce who was writing in Switzerland and wanted to know how long it took to get from one part of Dublin to another. He called someone and made them walk the route and count the steps – that’s great but I don’t need that level of verisimilitude. I often want mood or atmosphere. I want to feel my way into a scene and therefore you need to find someone who can look at things in the way that allows you to see them. I will often want photographs and telling detail so that I can piece together the scene and pick out what I want.

You’re currently working on the third Harper and Levene book. Can you tell us anything about it?

I can say that Tom Harper faces another very tough challenge and that Denise Levene comes into her own, although, it’s not an easy ride for either of them. The killer is particularly psychotic and I’m pretty scared whenever I’m writing those scenes. I won’t reveal plot yet as it’s too early to say, but I’m enjoying it and it’s going well.

American culture and the American psyche are famously inward looking. As an English writer writing about America, what insights do you have that may have passed Americans by?

I’m not sure that I am writing about America. I set my books in America but I feel that I’m writing about themes that aren’t particular to a single country. That said, the American setting gives me the distance I need to write about the difficult aspects of life and death, or fear and pain. I was particularly fascinated with American detective fiction when I was younger and I wanted to write in that genre, so the books are sometimes a reaction to those fictions I enjoyed. I think that the difference between the American and English psyche is worth exploring but I wouldn’t say that I have particular insights into America. I hope I have insights into human relationships and character but that’s the reader’s judgement.

Is Nazi ideology bound to endure as long as there is ignorance and inequality, or do you think decent people are capable of one day eradicating it, and if so, how?

I would say that it certainly will be eradicated as the vast majority of human beings do not believe in violence of hatred. Violence and hatred are not part of what people see as the good life and the life worth living. I do believe that mankind does make some progress through time and that we are better at expressing universal values than ever before. That does not mean that ignorance or hatred will not surface again in a different guise. It will, but what was so pervasive about Nazi ideology was that it attacked people for simply being who or what they were. It’s still an utterly shocking concept. But somehow, the shock of this was not felt and it was rationalised and humanised. Will human beings always provide reasons for the bad things they do or want to do? Yes, they will, but let’s hope that systematic, industrial and nationalised hatred is far harder to sustain than it once was. I’d also say that it is clear that the vast majority of humanity do not find the expression of hatred acceptable in any way. We have to remind ourselves that goodness always has the balance of numbers.

Additional questions by Mike Stafford.

Death Comes to Pemberley

Faber and Faber 2011, Hardcover, 320 pages, £18.99

The year is 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the Pemberley nursery, Elizabeth’s beloved sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live within seventeen miles, the ordered and secure life of Pemberley seems unassailable, and Elizabeth’s happiness in her marriage is complete.

But their peace is threatened and old sins and misunderstandings are rekindled on the eve of the annual autumn ball. The Darcys and their guests are preparing to retire for the night when a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley’s wild woodland, and as it pulls up, Lydia Wickham, an uninvited guest, tumbles out, screaming that her husband has been murdered.

In a pitch-perfect recreation of the world of Pride and Prejudice, P. D. James elegantly fuses her lifelong passion for the work of Jane Austen with her talent for writing detective fiction. She weaves a compelling story, combining a sensitive insight into the happy but threatened marriage of the Darcys and the excitement and suspense of a brilliantly crafted detective story.

Death Comes to Pemberley enshrines the qualities her readers have come to expect: psychological and emotional richness of characterisation, vivid evocation of place, and a credible and superbly structured plot, in a powerful and distinguished work of fiction.

P.D. James discusses Death Comes to Pemberley

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Catch Me

Headline 2012, Hardcover, 384 pages, £12.99

The latest brilliant novel in the D.D. Warren series from Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller Lisa Gardner.

IN FOUR DAYS, SOMEONE IS GOING TO KILL ME…

At 8pm on 21st January, twenty-eight year old Charlie Grant believes she is going to be murdered and she wants Boston’s top homicide detective, D.D. Warren, to handle her death investigation.

Confronting D.D. at her latest crime scene, Charlie lays her cards on the table. For each of the last two years, one of her childhood friends has been murdered leaving Charlie as the only one of the three friends to remain alive.

But as D.D. delves deeper in to the details of Charlie’s case, she begins to question the young woman’s story. Because Charlie can now outfight and outrun anyone she meets and D.D.’s instinct is that she’s hiding a secret. A secret so explosive that Charlie herself may turn out to be the biggest danger of all…

…BUT THE SON OF A BITCH HAS GOT TO CATCH ME FIRST.

Love You More

Headline 2012, Paperback, 416 pages, £6.99

WHO DO YOU LOVE?
Brian Darby lies dead on the kitchen floor. His wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni, claims to have shot him in self-defense, and bears the bruises to back up her tale. For veteran detective D. D. Warren it should be an open-and-shut case. But where is their six-year-old daughter?

AND HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO . . .
As the homicide investigation ratchets into a frantic statewide search for a missing child, D. D. Warren must partner with former lover Bobby Dodge to break through the blue wall of police brotherhood, seeking to understand the inner workings of a trooper’s mind while also unearthing family secrets. Would a trained police officer truly shoot her own husband? And would a mother harm her own child?

. . . TO SAVE HER?
For Tessa Leoni, the worst has not yet happened. She is walking a tightrope, with nowhere to turn and no one to trust. She has one goal in sight, and she will use every ounce of her training to do what must be done. No sacrifice is too great, no action unthinkable. A mother knows who she loves. And all others will be made to pay.

Ian Fleming’s Commandos

Faber and Faber 2011, Hardcover, 416 pages, £20.00

In 1942, Lieutenant-Commander Ian Fleming was personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence – the dynamic figure behind James Bond’s fictional chief, ‘M’. Here, Fleming had a brilliant idea: why not set up a unit of authorised looters, men who would go in hard with the front-line troops and steal enemy intelligence? Known as ’30 Assault Unit’, they took part in the major campaigns of the Second World War, landing on the Normandy beaches and helping to liberate Paris. 30AU’s final amazing coup was to seize the entire archives of the German Navy – thirty tons of documents. Ian Fleming flew out in person to get the loot back to Britain, where it was combed for evidence to use in the Nuremburg trials. In this gripping and highly enjoyable book, Nicholas Rankin, author of the best-selling Churchill’s Wizards, puts 30 Assault Unit’s fascinating story in a strategic and intelligence context. He also argues that Ian Fleming’s Second World War service was one of the most significant periods of his life – without this, the most popular spy fiction of the twentieth century would not have been written.

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As you’d expect from any book by the author of Churchill’s Wizards and Telegram from Guernica, there’s no shortage of forensic historical detail and this, combined with Fleming’s ‘secret’ life and the well-known Fleming of the James Bond novels, means we get a riveting recreation of an intriguing period of British history, with added Boys Ownadventure.

‘Packed with the eccentric characters you’d expect to find in the wartime spy world … This is a story as riveting as any spy tale Fleming subsequently sent his creation on; the characters the officer worked with and their deeds would pepper or provide the inspiration for Bond stories. Those stories have rather eclipsed the deeds of the men who served as his inspiration, but be in no doubt of 30 Assault Unit’s importance to history.’ Navy News

We asked Nicholas Rankin to tell us more…

What inspired you to write the book?

The late, great BBC reporter Charles Wheeler kick-started it, I think. He was a 21-year-old captain in the Royal Marines when he landed in France on D-Day as an Interrogator with Ian Fleming’s commando assault unit, 30AU. Charles told me about this in 2008 just before the press preview of the Imperial War Museum centenary exhibition For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond. In a room there dedicated to Fleming’s wartime experience I talked to the son of one of his commandos as well as the eldest daughter of the Director of Naval Intelligence who hired Fleming as his personal assistant, Admiral John Godfrey, who became the basis of the fictional ‘M’, James Bond’s boss in the novels. There seemed to be a book waiting to be written around Fleming in World War II.

When researching the book Ian Fleming’s Commandos what was the most surprising story you uncovered and why?

We all know Ian Fleming as the author of the James Bond fantasy spy novels of the 1950s and early sixties. But what is striking is just how deeply involved he was in real war-time intelligence, as Commander Ian Fleming RNVR. He worked closely with Britain’s two Directors of Naval Intelligence throughout the Second World War from 1939 to 1945. ‘17 (F)’ – as he appears in the Naval Intelligence files and dockets – was a man who knew many secrets. He was Naval Intelligence’s liaison with ‘C’, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and also with the sabotage and resistance organisation, SOE, the Special Operations Executive. He knew the people who ran double agents and deceptions in the Security Service, MI5. He regularly visited Bletchley Park, the Government Code and Cypher School that cracked enemy secret messages, and he knew the American General Bill Donovan who founded the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA.  So the Bond fictions are grounded in genuine reality.

What anecdote most resembles the exploits of the fictional character, James Bond?

Fleming set up 30 Assault Unit to ‘pinch’ enemy technical intelligence. The frogmen and miniature submarines of Thunderball owe a lot to 30AU’s WWII experiences dealing with Italian underwater daredevils, which are described in my book, the Spektor coding machine in From Russia With Love is inspired by the real-life German Enigma coding machines that were stolen for Bletchley Park, and the wicked rocket scientists in Moonraker were inspired by 30AU’s hunting down of VI and V2 rocket sites and German scientists, as described in my final chapters.

No single real-life person is the origin of Bond, but I think it’s important that he’s Commander Bond, not Wing-Commander or Lieutenant-Colonel Bond – by which I mean that people often forget Bond is a Royal Navy figure, out of what used to be called ‘the Senior Service’, like Ian Fleming.

Did you meet any of the surviving members of the 30 Assault Unit?

Yes indeed. The Royal Marines have outlived their officers because they’re fitter, I guess. Paul McGrath, for example, still plays golf regularly in his late eighties. He’s the only survivor of Fleming’s original unit, first tested in the Dieppe raid on 19th August 1942. He was also in the Torch landings, the invasion of Italy, D-Day in France and the conquest of Germany. And ‘Bon’ Royle, Dr A. G. Royle, another vigorous participant, still witty and sharp as a knife, was a fund of stories too. My book combines personal anecdotes with archival research to try and give a tactical and strategic view of this interesting unit and its characters. Robert Harling pungently described these Royal Marines as ‘merry, courageous, amoral, loyal, lying toughs.’

What was the crowning achievement of 30 Assault Unit?

They helped liberate Brittany and Paris in 1944, which must have felt good. But their apotheosis was probably in Nazi Germany in 1945 when they seized a great deal of advanced weaponry and new technology as well as the entire German naval archives from 1870 onwards, including both world wars. The Americans captured the rocket scientist Werner von Braun who later put a man on the moon, but 30AU captured Dr Helmuth Walter whose work helped Britain to develop new jets and submarines in the 1950s. An amazing coup.

Does the 30 Assault Unit still exist?

The original unit was disbanded in 1946, but the Royal Marines remustered 30 Commando Information Exploitation Group in December 2010 as the intelligence-gathering ‘information regiment’ inside 3 Commando Brigade. They’re currently in Afghanistan, I believe. If I told you anything more about them, I’d probably have to kill you. And then myself.

A new Faber Finds title, The Hazard Mesh by J. A. C. Hugill, will be published this year. I understand you wrote the introduction to the new edition of the book. Can you tell us more about it?

Tony Hugill was a scientifically trained technical officer in 30AU who wrote a vividly authentic account of his part in the D-Day landings and the liberation of France. I’ve gone back to his original pencilled diaries, which he wrote in the field, and compared them with the self-censored manuscript that he delivered in 1946. (They’re all in the Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge.) I’ve identified the real people and fill in the background to some of the incidents investigating German radar and weapons. Only 500 copies of The Hazard Mesh were printed then, but history buffs who order it from Faber Finds will see it is the real thing, and Hugill makes you feel you are there with him.

Your last book, Churchill’s Wizards, explores British ingenuity and inventiveness and Ian Fleming’s Commandos covers the story behind his Second World War unit. Are you writing a new book and what will this be about?

Ernest Hemingway (whose liberation of the Hotel Ritz in Paris in August 1944 I describe in Ian Fleming’s Commandos) often warned against ‘mouthing up’ a book too much. It’s true for historians too. When I separately asked Anthony Beevor and Ben Macintyre what they were currently writing they immediately clammed up and changed the subject. I can tell you that I have been reading about the Falklands/Malvinas War. But whether that’s a decoy answer or not, we’ll just have to wait and see.

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Old Enemies

Simon & Schuster Ltd 2011, Paperback, 432 pages, £12.99

In the Swiss Alps a teenage girl is thrown from a helicopter and her boyfriend is brutally abducted to Trieste, a city filled with undercurrents of past hatreds. Ruari, son of Irish media owner J J Breslin, is in desperate danger, at the mercy of ruthless kidnappers making impossible demands. His terrified mother contacts the only person she knows can help her son: Harry Jones, her former lover, who she walked out on many years ago. Now memories of their passionate affair, the guilt, hurt, anger and humiliation, come flooding back. Time is running out for Ruari and Harry, torn between his loyalties, is quickly drawn into a political game played for high stakes. Far higher than he realizes…

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