Forthcoming Books from Head of Zeus

 January 2026

Robert Ludlum's Bourne's Revenge is by Brian Freeman. Killing is part of Jason's job. But this time it's personal. When his lover, Johanna, is murdered, Jason Bourne finds himself drawn into a murky world as he pursues a revenge more personal than anything he has felt before. But can he unravel the reasons behind Johanna's death in time, or will more people die unnecessarily?

Are you ready to enter the darkness? Discover the origins of Agent Pendergast... FBI Special Agent Dwight Chambers has lost everything. His partner, his wife, and his footing at the Bureau. Now, he’s been assigned to mentor a new recruit who just might be the final nail in his coffin. A.X.L. Pendergast is an enigmatic young agent with a complicated past. His recklessness soon drags Chambers into chaos and gets them both suspended. For Pendergast, this is a chance to investigate a peculiar murder in Mississippi. With Chambers grudgingly in tow, the two agents discover a string of grisly, ritualistic killings that defy any known pattern. Thanks to Pendergast’s unorthodox brilliance, they manage to find the killer. Then the true horror begins. Pendergast: The Beginning is by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

February 2026

The Harvey Girl is by Dana Stabenow. Welcome to the gilded age where not everything glitters. 1890. The New Mexico Territory is a lawless frontier where criminals steal money and land alike with impunity. Everyone wears a six-gun and is ready and willing to draw it. In the new city of Montaña Roja, Fred Harvey’s growing empire is threatened by the robberies plaguing his newest Harvey House restaurant. To get justice, he needs a skilled detective to go undercover and procure answers to questions the law will not ask. The assignment falls to Clare Wright, a young Pinkerton agent. Disguised as one of Harvey’s famous hostesses, Clare travels west where she risks being exposed at every step of her investigation. To get answers – and to get out alive – there are only two things she can trust: her instincts, and her derringer.

March 2026

When Joe Pickett is shot down his daughters step up. Marybeth Pickett gets the call she has always dreaded: her husband Joe is unconscious after being shot in the head. He was found slumped behind the wheel of his pickup at a crossroads linking the ranches of three powerful families. Each have reasons to want the Wyoming Game Warden dead, but with no witnesses, no one knows who pulled the trigger. As Joe clings to life, Marybeth keeps watch while their daughters – Sheridan, Lucy, and April – play the role their father cannot, investigating each family to expose long-held grudges and reveal the truth. But the sisters must be careful – because if this was a warning, what might the attackers do to the people Joe loves most? The Crossroads is by C J Box.

The Dark Time is by Nick Petrie. When Peter Ash's friend June Cassidy asks him for a deeply personal favour, it leads him into the murderous depths of a sinister organisation. A journalist - a close friend of June's - has been receiving serious death threats, threats which extend to her teenage daughter. Peter must leave Wisconsin for Washington, heading to Seattle to make sure both mother and daughter are safe. When aspects of the threats, already credible, prove true, Peter must dig deep to discover the perpetrators. His search reveals a doomsday cult led by a shadowy figure with a death-wish to cause untold mayhem.  To save innocent people, Peter is willing to face the ultimate sacrifice. But will one man be enough to stop the carnage?

A decades-old murder. A haunting legacy. A plot for revenge. Stella Darnell knows her partner Jack is hiding something. After following him one evening, she discovers he’s been consulting a psychic in a desperate attempt to reach his dead mother. A sceptic by nature, and feeling betrayed by his lies, Stella fears what this means for their relationship. Seeking distraction, she accepts DI Toni Kemp’s invitation to join her for a holiday in a small village in Gloucestershire. But the visit is derailed when a body is discovered at a shrine where a woman died decades earlier. Drawn into the investigation, Stella must confront the legacy of a once-famous psychic whose shadow still hangs over Prestbury – while in the darkness, someone bent on revenge waits patiently for the perfect moment to strike... The Shrine is by Lesley Thomson.

Diplomat Eric Petrosian has returned to Sarajevo, twenty years after the horrors of the Srebrenica massacre which took the life of his friend. The spectre of war again hangs over the Balkans. The Bosnian Serb leader is now threatening to pull Bosnia apart in a bloody struggle for control. Pulling the strings from the shadows is a ruthless organised crime figure. As Eric is dragged deeper into the political maelstrom, he uncovers an ambitious plot of blackmail and treachery and faces an impossible choice: use that information to atone for the past – or use it to shape the future. The Wolf of Sarajevo is by Matthew Palmer.

May 2026

Even paradise has shadows.  July 2025. Tash and Mark host a birthday weekend for their son, Dom, at their luxury villa on a Greek island, inviting a select list of people to celebrate. As the drinks flow, the unthinkable happens when Tash’s sister drowns, vanishing without a trace. No one suspects foul play – except for Tash.  July 2026. One year on, Tash hosts a party for the same guests who were there when Emma died. She's learned that they're all hiding something - even Dom's behaviour has changed since that night. She knows that answers lie on the island and no one is leaving until she gets the truth. But if the villa holds the secrets to what happened, it also hides a killer.. Her Perfect Escape is by Rachel Wolf.

The Spy and the Snake is by M J Robotham. One mission. One fake husband. One very real problem. Maggie Flynn has finally earned her place at of MI5—but with promotion comes paperwork. No more disguises, no more danger, just meetings, memos, and the quiet realisation that life feels a little too safe. With her daughter away at university and her spirited mother pursuing her own adventures, Maggie’s days in London are starting to feel decidedly ordinary. So when the chance arises to return to the field, she doesn’t hesitate. The assignment: fly to Budapest and pose as the wife of a notorious British defector in order to smuggle him back to the UK. It should be a straightforward operation. But Maggie Flynn has never done straightforward—and what’s waiting in Budapest is anything but routine. As Cold War tensions simmer and shadows linger on every corner, Maggie finds herself navigating a city steeped in secrets—and drawn to a mysterious stranger who may endanger the mission… or steal her heart.

June 2026

The Red Verdict is by James Comey.US Attorney Nora Carleton must confront a murderous espionage plot aimed at stealing cutting-edge American technology. The unmissable new legal thriller from the former director of the FBI. When an influential defense company executive sprinkles hot pepper flakes on his penne vodka at an exclusive restaurant in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, little does he know that the first bite will be the last thing he ever tastes.  The fatal meal has been spiked with Novichok, a potent poison guaranteed to do maximum damage to its victims. The FBI investigates the murder and soon discovers a Russian-originated plot aimed at stealing cutting-edge drone technology from US defense contractors. US Attorney Nora Carleton and her team must put together the case of their lives to get a jury to convict the perpetrators - but in a modern world wrought with division, can they secure the verdict they hope for?

They had the perfect marriage. Until she was found alive… 2020. During a friend’s birthday trip, Kaleigh Creedy’s life was torn apart when she and her two friends, Emma and Leila, were violently attacked in the middle of the night. Only Kaleigh managed to escape. 2025. Now married to a famous footballer and a rising star in her own right, the former beauty queen has tried to put the terror of that night behind her. But just when Kaleigh thinks she’s safe, the unthinkable happens… Emma is found alive, and her version of events doesn’t match Kaleigh’s. Her perfect life is unravelling, the tabloids are circling, but who will you believe? Scandal is by Kelly Mancaruso and Kristina Mancaruso.

Return to Finder

 

We’ve been readers of Joe Finder’s espionage thrillers at Shots Magazine for some time now, and have bumped into him many times both in America at Thrillerfest and Bouchercon Conventions but also in the UK as he’s been a guest author at Theakston’s Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate several times. In fact in 2017, Joe Finder joined our quiz team adding his weight to his fellow Journalists – sadly we came an honourable [and very close] second. Well in our defence, the winning team had a secret weapon - the writer of AppleTV+ Slow Horses Mick Herron. The creator of James Bond Antidote - Jackson Lamb who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the crime fiction genre – though he dresses better than his creation - Jackson Lamb.

Anyway, I digress……..It’s been a while since we’ve read one of Joe’s thrillers, so both Mike Stotter and I were delighted to meet up with him during Bouchercon 2025, in New Orleans, both watching his panel as well with Gerald Petievich at Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press anniversary party held on Bourbon Street. 

We learned that Joe’s latest bestselling novel The Oligarch’s Daughter has just been released in Paperback in the UK from his British Publishers, Head of Zeus. On return to the UK, I managed to read this extraordinary novel over two sittings [which is saying something, considering the heft of this thriller].

Here are my thoughts -

Joe Finder’s latest novel is a literary throwback to the 1970s cold war espionage-action thriller but given a high-tech upgrade to pull it into our contemporary times. Ostensibly a cat and mouse chase that traverses trade-craft, technology, time and terrain, it is greater than the sum of its parts because it makes the reader ponder on what it takes to vanish and escape ‘the grid’.

The chase commences in New England, when boat-builder Grant Anderson takes a client out on a sea fishing trip. Little is as it appears, for the client is actually a hired assassin contracted to eliminate Anderson. It is revealed that Grant Anderson is a non-de-plume for Paul Brightman, a New Yorker who vanished many years ago. It seems that Paul Brightman’s cover is blown.

Read our full review at Shots Magazine HERE

Following reading The Oligarch’s Daughter, I had a few questions for the author, and he graciously answered my queries which we present for our readers.

Ali Karim: Welcome back to Shots Magazine, it’s been a while…..

Joe Finder: I know, and it’s good to be back, Ali – thank you for having me!

AK: It was good seeing you at Bouchercon New Orleans in September, so tell us what you got up to in ‘The Big Easy’?

JF: Besides breakfasts at the Ruby Slipper café and a couple of excellent dinners, I was able to catch up with some old friends and make some new ones.  New Orleans was a great setting for the conference, and I always love Bouchercon. I love my community of mystery/thriller writers and readers.

AK: ….your long awaited novel THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER has just been released in Paperback in the UK, so tell us where your fascination with Russian Political Intrigue stems from?

JF: I’ve been interested in Russia since before my college days, when I discovered the works of the Great Russian novelist and short-story writer Nikolai Gogol.  I was fascinated by a culture that could produce such a writer, and in college I majored in Russian studies, with a focus on Soviet politics and intelligence. That led to my first book, a nonfiction book about the most prominent American businessmen who had personal connections to the Kremlin . . . which in turn led to my first novel, THE MOSCOW CLUB, which centred on a coup in the Kremlin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I moved on to other topics in my thrillers but remained interested in Russia.  It took me a while, but I finally got back to it in THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER.

AK: THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER is rather prescient, when you consider the Russian special operation in Ukraine and the curious Russian financial matters internationally since the fall of the Soviet Union; so did you have any fears setting this novel with such a backdrop?

JF: I’ve written about a curious break-in at my office a few years ago that followed my criticizing Putin and the Russian secret services on live Russian TV.  After which, the FBI warned me not to visit Moscow again. So yes, I was apprehensive about writing another book that dealt with Russian matters. But I did it anyway. Though I don’t plan to be visiting Russia any time soon.

AK: When I read THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER it reminded me of a Robert Ludlum international thriller, but with updated technology and faster velocity. Would you care to comment?

JF: Thanks, Ali – I take that as a compliment, because I’ve always loved Ludlum’s novels.  High literature it ain’t, but Ludlum was unparalleled in the way he created and sustained tension throughout his stories.  Ludlum – who was a friend, by the way – was also skilled at conspiracy novels, stories in which a conspiracy is gradually revealed and becomes larger in scope, involving higher and higher circles of power, in an atmosphere of growing paranoia.  I tried to do something like that with THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER, and I’m delighted that you think I succeeded.

AK: ..wow friends with Robert Ludlum……and so which of Robert Ludlum’s thrillers would be favourites of yours and why?

JF: I have particular fondness for THE HOLCROFT COVENANT, which starts in a classic conspiratorial way: an American architect meets with a mysterious stranger on a train in Geneva.  He then meets his father, a man he never knew, and discovers a massive plot involving the children of Nazis. I’m also quite fond of THE MATARESE CIRCLE, in which a CIA agent and a KGB agent are forced to work together to try to defeat a far-reaching conspiracy whose origins date back more than a century.  And of course THE BOURNE IDENTITY is just a solid-gold classic that begins with an irresistible premise – a man awakes one day with amnesia, having no idea who he is.  The only clue is a piece of microfilm with the numbers of a Swiss bank account.

AK: One of my favourite Ludlum works is THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND….one of his slimmer thrillers [and as adapted for the screen, it was sadly Sam Peckinpah’s final directed film]…anyway, putting you on the spot…can you name a few thriller writers that influenced you [or impressed you] when you were young, and their most important work [in your opinion]?

JF: There are a number of thriller writers who made a deep impression on me: Eric Ambler (THE MASK [aka COFFIN] OF DIMITRIOS, JOURNEY INTO FEAR), Frederick Forsyth (THE DAY OF THE JACKAL), Ken Follett (EYE OF THE NEEDLE), John le Carré (THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD) are just a few of them. And when I was younger, I loved the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming.  It’s a rich genre.

AK: Back to THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER, I found some of the supporting characters such as Grant Anderson / Paul Brightman’s girlfriend Sarah Harrison; his estranged father Stan, his nemesis the former CIA Asset Geraldine Dempsey among many others are interestingly delineated – can you tell us how you paint characters so distinctly in such a fast-moving plot-driven thriller without slowing the pace?

JF: It’s a funny paradox: in a fast-paced thriller it’s quite difficult to establish full-blooded characters, yet a suspense novel doesn’t work unless we care about the central characters.  These characters – particularly Paul’s father, Stan, and his nemesis, Geraldine Dempsey – came to me in the round, so to speak. They felt real to me. I think the trick is to employ brush strokes of characterization, highly specific bits of description, lines of dialogue, reactions – so that they come to life in the reader’s mind, as real as they were in the writer’s.

AK: Your work has been filmed, with amazing casting such as Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd in High Crimes and Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford in Paranoia, so have you any news of film options on your other works?

JF: Yes! I recently signed a deal with a terrific producer, Carl Beverly of Timberman/Beverly (producers of Justified, Masters of Sex, Elementary, Seal Team, and Kidnapped) for a TV series based on my Nick Heller character, starting with an adaptation of my Nick Heller novel GUILTY MINDS. And I also have signed a deal for another TV series based on THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER. Both deals are with excellent producers, but this being Hollywood, anything can happen . . .

AK: Are you still active with International Thriller Writers [ITW] as you were a founder, and still involved with the Association of Former Intelligence Officers?

JF: I’m very active in ITW, recruiting writers for anthologies that help underwrite ITW’s activities that assist beginning and mid-career thriller authors, and of course I always go to ThrillerFest in New York.  And although I’m less active in AFIO, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, I remain friendly with former CIA officers (I was not one) and often call upon them to help me research my novels.

AK: And finally, what’s on the horizon for Joe Finder?

JF: I’m deep into a new book, the beginning of a new series, and as usual, it’s taken me over . . .

AK: Thank you for your time Joe.

JF: Thank you, Ali, and thanks for your enthusiasm about THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER!

Shots Magazine would like to pass our thanks to Joe Finder and his British Publisher Head of Zeus for this interview.

The Oligarch’s Daughter is now released in the UK and Ireland in Paperback, and for more information on the work of Joe Finder > https://josephfinder.com/

Here’s an interesting video [below] where Joe Finder discusses The Oligarch’s Daughter with the editor of The New Yorker David Remnick.

 

 

The 'Real' Locked Room Ghosts, Memory, and the House at Devil's Neck.by Tom Mead

“I get the willies when I see closed doors,” says Bob Slocum, narrator of Joseph Heller’s 1974 novel Something Happened. Of course it’s not really the doors that frighten Bob; it’s what they represent. It’s the idea of something secret going on in another room. The closed door symbolises Bob’s paranoia; his pathological fear of secrets and betrayal that will set him off on a path toward madness. The closed door—that single, seemingly innocuous image—takes us to the heart of the character’s psyche, and the root of his fear. 

Now, Joseph Heller is perhaps an unlikely reference point for a piece about a vintage-style whodunit, but I mention him here for a reason. You see, I’ve written a series of Golden Age-inspired mysteries which are built around my great fascination with the recurring motif of the locked-room mystery. For the uninitiated, the locked-room mystery is a subgenre of crime fiction dealing with so-called impossible crimes; typically murders with an air of something supernatural about them, as though the criminal possessed otherworldly powers. Inevitably, though, the solution to the mystery is rational, earthly, and eventually deduced by an ingenious sleuth via the process of ratiocination. 

The locked-room mystery is the most ornate, labyrinthine construction in the crime fiction world; it’s a self-consciously surreal exercise in puzzle-making where logic and lateral thinking are paramount. But it’s also a surprisingly blank canvas for creative expression—at least, I’ve always found it that way. Once you’ve established the parameters of your puzzle, you can go pretty much anywhere. I tend to think this is the reason locked-room mysteries—more than any other crime subgenre—crop up in so many other fields of literature, including science fiction (such as Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel, or Adam Roberts’s The Real Town Murders) and fantasy (Randall Garrett’s Too Many Magicians). There is so much scope for imagination and flights of fancy that it is a positively irresistible challenge for writers of all genres. 

For me, the puzzle is important for several reasons. When done right, the locked-room mystery is a work of art akin to a perfectly constructed Swiss watch. Its moving parts all converge and coalesce to produce a single, immensely satisfying effect for the reader. But that’s not all; the solving of a mystery, or the restoring of earthly logic to a seemingly illogical world, is deeply cathartic. 

There is often talk of classic mysteries scratching our collective itch to see justice done, and to see the good guys foiling the bad guys. Maybe this is true in some instances, but to me it’s an oversimplification. I think the real thrill of a locked room comes from its exploration of a deeper psychological mystery. The seemingly impossible puzzle upends our understanding of the world; it makes us question our senses, our logic, our very selves. And by the time the solution to the mystery is presented, and we see how we have been tricked, we’ve gained a deeper philosophical understanding of ourselves. We see that our perceptions are shaped by our interactions with the world around us. The locked-room mystery places this strange dialogue between our inner and outer worlds at the heart of the narrative.

The same is true of classic ghost stories, which dredge up images from the depths of our collective unconscious and present them as physical manifestations. In a way, ghosts are memories; projections of our own fear and trauma. Which brings me to the unpleasant business at Devil’s Neck.

The House at Devil’s Neck is the fourth in my series of spooky, Golden Age-inspired puzzle mysteries featuring magician-turned-sleuth Joseph Spector. Like the other titles in the series, it’s intended primarily as an entertainment; a piece of escapism. But it’s also an excuse to explore deeper and darker territory—in an oblique way, of course. 

This time around, it is August 1939 and Spector travels out to a derelict mansion to participate in a séance. The date is highly significant, since the ghost who walks the halls of the house at Devil’s Neck is a soldier of the First World War. After the séance, circumstances begin to get out of control: one of the party is found dead; murdered in a locked room. Then another. And as the bodies pile up, the clock continues ticking, inching our characters closer and closer to the precipice of a fresh horror: the dawn of a Second World War. 

So you see, The House at Devil’s Neck is a mystery in more than one sense. It’s about solving impossible murders and catching a Machiavellian criminal. But more broadly speaking it’s also about the bleak inevitability of approaching conflict, while the shadows of a previous conflict still loom large: ghosts, memories, or whatever you want to call them. 

By the end of the book, the primary puzzles are solved. The “who” and the “how” have been deciphered, and the supernatural impossibilities unravelled. But the solution to the other, deeper mystery—an endless cycle of conflict, returning again and again like a vengeful spirit—remains elusive. It would take a greater detective than Joseph Spector to explain that. 

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead is published by Head of Zeus on 14th August at £20. 

This gripping locked-room mystery sees Joseph Spector investigate his most sinister case yet: murderous machinations at a haunted manor house. A former First World War field hospital, the spooky old mansion at Devil's Neck attracts spirit-seekers from far and wide.  Illusionist-turned-sleuth Joseph Spector knows the house of old. With stories spreading of a phantom soldier making mischief, he joins a party of visitors in search of the truth. But the house, located on a lonely causeway, is quickly cut off by floods. The stranded visitors are soon being killed off one by one. With old ally Inspector Flint working on a complex case that has links to Spector's investigation, the two men must connect the dots before Devil's Neck claims Spector himself as its next victim.

More information about Tom Mead can be found on his website. You can also find him on X @TomMeadAuthor and on Instagram @tommeadauthor. You can also find him on Facebook. 

Tom will be speaking at Manor Farm Library, Ruislip HA4 7SU with Barbara Nadel on 15th August at 3pm.  Tickets £2. For tickets see: https://tinyurl.com/fjf7esed.

He will also be speaking at Death in the Dales Festival with Martin Edwards & Dolores Gordon Smith on Saturday 18th October at 3.15pm. For tickets for the day see: https://www.sedbergh.org.uk/view-event/death-in-the-dales-festival-of-crime-2/

Move Over Marta Hari - Here comes the Middle Aged Spy by M J Robotham

Breathless, the KGB man stumbles onto the crowded train platform, the prickling of his skin signalling that he hasn’t yet escaped the shadowy figures on his tail. He scans rapidly for any likely spooks in the sea of faces: the middle-aged man in a mac, head buried in the evening newspaper; the woman dressed to the nines for an evening date and applying more lipstick with the aid of her compact; the brightly-dressed juggler heading home after a day’s toil in street theatre. Our KGB boy sweats. Experience says it could be any one of them. But which will give the signal to out him as an enemy of the British state and curtail his freedom for good?

Behind all three candidates, a sweet old dear on a bench pack away her knitting into a tired holdall, stands and totters unsteadily across the platform, forcing First-Lieutenant Petrov to remember his ingrained manners and step aside.

‘Thank you, young man,’ the old woman rasps quietly as she passes, ‘but I’m afraid you’ve been made, Alexei.’   

Fact, fiction or somewhere in between? Popular culture would have us believe that female members of the spy world are more often that woman dressed to impress: young, slim, and lithe – think The Avengers feisty Emma Peel, Goldfinger’s Pussy Galore (plus a whole troop of ‘Bond girls’ thereafter), and even Scarlett Johannson’s modern take in Marvel’s Black Widow. They pack a punch but are, first and foremost, sexy and alluring for the screen. In day-to-day espionage, however, I’d argue the leather catsuit has a tendency to stand out a tad. Far better that your furtive member of the Security Service is of average height and weight, with non-descript features and a wardrobe from Marks & Spencer. Someone you wouldn’t glance at twice at, let alone clock their motive or the secret camera tucked in their shopping bag.

As a huge fan of spy fiction and a newbie author in this genre with Mrs Spy, I thought long and hard about what the covert world demands. My own creation of MI5 Watcher Maggie Flynn is no spring chicken: 45, slightly squat, and even on a good day would benefit from a visit to the hairdresser. At all times, she lugs around several hats and at least one half-finished knitting project, making her nigh-on invisible amid the kaleidoscopic London of the 1960’s. No-one can recall the dowdy ‘ole biddy click-clacking away in the background.

Maggie is my fiction, but she is not – as it happens - too far from reality. While history and myth have painted the celebrated Mata Hari as the archetypal female spy in her belly-dancing garb, she is in the minority. As far back as the first world war, British intelligence employed a swathe of older women to place themselves next to German railway tracks. While gossiping and knitting, they were quietly logging every troop movement or military carriage in their complex stitch pattern. The subsequent ‘coded’ sweaters were sent back to England for analysis as a bizarre form of Morse. Post-war, the East German secret police – the infamous Stasi – employed thousands of older women as ‘block monitors’, spying on residents while sweeping apartment corridors in a bid to flush out enemies of the communist ideology.

And individually, it seems, dowdy aligns with the devious. Short and stout, Daphne Park was likened by colleagues to Miss Marple and even described herself as ‘a fat missionary-type.’ She was also one of MI6’s most successful overseas spies, running agents in Hanoi, Moscow, Zambia, and the politically incendiary Congo throughout her long career, once hiding a dissident in the boot of her ancient Citroen CV. Her effectiveness was put down to her open and unassuming manner, a million miles from a sultry siren.

Similarly, eighty-seven-year-old Briton Melita Norwood caused a media frenzy when she was exposed as the Soviet’s longest-serving spy in 2017, having passed atomic secrets in the 1930’s and beyond. Later dramatized in the film, Red Joan, Melita’s shocked neighbours in her suburban street admitted they didn’t suspect a thing from the benign-looking grandmother. The list doesn’t end there: ‘mumsy’ American TV cook Julia Childs worked for the CIA, and the US’s illustrious wartime agent Virginia Hall went as far as knocking out several teeth in disguising herself as an old peasant woman, successfully dodging capture in Nazi-occupied France.

Where life leads, fiction often follows among John Le Carre’s most memorable characters in his iconic Smiley series is Connie Sachs, an ageing, eccentric alcoholic, and expert on Soviet intelligence. Brilliantly brought to life on screen by Beryl Reid and Kathy Burke, Sachs is said to be modelled on a real-life MI6 Watcher Millicent Bagot.

Inspired by this army of unassuming spooks, Mrs Spy sees my own Maggie Flynn waging her war against infiltration from both east and west, proving once again that ordinary trumps outlandish in the murky world of espionage.

Take a leaf out of Maggie’s book: if you want to blend in, be more bag lady!

 

Mrs Spy by M J Robotham, is published on May 15th by Aria/Head of Zeus, available in hardback, digital and audio. 

Maggie Flynn isn’t your typical 1960s mum. She’s a spy, an unsuspecting operative for MI5, stalking London’s streets in myriad disguises. Widowed and balancing her clandestine career with raising a Beatles-mad teenage daughter, Maggie finds comfort and purpose in her profession – providing a connection to her late husband, whose own covert past only surfaced after his death. But Maggie’s world spins out of control when a chance encounter with a mysterious Russian agent triggers a chilling revelation: he knew her husband. And what’s worse, the agent suspects someone on home soil betrayed him. As Maggie searches for answers, she’ll question everyone – and everything – she thought she could trust. In the murky and perilous world of espionage, can she outsmart those determined to keep her silenced?

M J Robotham can be found on Instagram @Robothammandy and on X @mandyrobothamuk 

Tom Mead On Sweet Revenge: The Dark Origins of Cabaret Macabre

My first novel, Death and the Conjuror, and the bulk of its sequel, The Murder Wheel, were written in 2020 at the height of the UK’s COVID lockdowns. They were attempts to channel the joy—the sheer delight—that I find in Golen Age mysteries and use it to create something new. As such, both books are love letters to my favourite authors: John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Helen McCloy, Christianna Brand, Nicholas Blake, Edmund Crispin, and so many others. But as well as direct references to the work of the greats, the first two Joseph Spector novels are conscious attempts to emulate their style—to create something with the feel of a novel that might have been written in the glory days of the 1930s, when the puzzle mystery was at its peak. 

When the time came to get started on the third Spector novel, I felt more comfortable and (dare I say it) confident with my characters and the overall style of the books. As such, I was a little wary of resting on my laurels, recycling the same themes and ideas. But I wanted to retain the elements which (to my mind, at least) define the series, namely: magic, the theatre, the Gothic, the locked-room mystery. So, I started thinking about other influences which would blend neatly with that already-established formula. This brought me to the classic Japanese murder mystery—the honkaku—and its contemporary counterpart, shin-honkaku. These are genres with copious Golden Age connections, but also a heightened, pointedly non-naturalistic approach, high body counts, eccentric families, and brutal, bizarre murders. Tropes which are shared by an entirely different, yet curiously analogous, field: Jacobean tragedy.

As a lover of theatre (The Murder Wheel is set primarily in the backstage corridors of a fictional West End theatre, The Pomegranate), I wanted my characters to leave theatreland this time around, but to bring a semblance of the innately surreal realm of the stage with them to the fresh environs of the snowbound house in the English countryside. So, I looked to Jacobean drama. Agatha Christie made copious use of Shakespearean quotations for epigraphs and titles (Sad Cypress, Taken at the Flood), while Sleeping Murder features the John Webster tragedy The Duchess of Malfi as a prominent plot point—as does P.D. James’s The Skull Beneath the Skin. Meanwhile, Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift (adapted for television as the very first episode of the long-running smash hit Midsomer Murders) borrows significant plot elements from John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore. There is therefore significant precedent for the overlap of such seemingly disparate genres. After all, both classic mysteries and these classic dramas rely on complex and remarkably convoluted plots, large casts of characters, and an all-important preoccupation with the macabre.

I have always been particularly fascinated by The Revenger’s Tragedy—even its origins are shrouded in mystery: it has been attributed to both Cyril Tourneur and Thomas Middleton. And the theme of revenge is incredibly potent and evocative. Of course, The Revenger’s Tragedy is decidedly not a mystery—though the characters deceive each other, they never deceive the audience. But what if, I wondered, the plot was reimagined and reinvented—transmogrified into a whodunit and, more importantly, a locked-room mystery? This gave me the shape of Cabaret Macabre.

Instead of Vindice the eponymous revenger, we have the troubled Victor Silvius. Instead of Castiza we have Caroline. And instead of the wicked duke, we have the judge, Sir Giles Drury. This was the inspiration I had been waiting for—I could practically see my cast of characters assembling in front of me.

And, perhaps inevitably, this one idea stimulated a slew of others. References to real-life criminous cases and characters--including the Brighton trunk murders of 1934 and the controversial celebrity pathologist Bernard Spilsbury--found their counterparts in the perverse yet fiercely logical murder plot. One strange, impossible death led to another, and my tapestry of puzzles began to coalesce into a single, cohesive piece. And the identity of the killer was a thrilling enigma.

The aim of any murder mystery is to give the reader a thrill; to whisk them away to another world. Whether Cabaret Macabre meets these criteria is not for me to say… but what I do know is that the book gave me plenty of thrills when I was writing it, and I can only hope it has a few more in store for the reader.

Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead (Out Now) Head of Zeus

Bestselling author sleuth and illusionist Joseph Spector investigates his most complex case yet in this gripping new locked-room murder mystery, set in an English country house just before the Second World War. Hampshire, 1938. When prominent judge Sir Giles Drury starts receiving sinister letters, his wife suspects Victor Silvius, a man confined to a sanatorium after attacking Sir Giles. Meanwhile, Silvius’ sister Caroline is convinced her brother is about to be murdered... by none other than his old nemesis Sir Giles Drury. Caroline seeks the advice of Scotland Yard’s Inspector Flint, while the Drurys, eager to avoid a scandal, turn to Joseph Spector. Spector, renowned magician turned sleuth, has an uncanny knack for solving complicated crimes – but this case will test his powers of deduction to their limits. At a snowbound English country house, a body is found is impossible circumstances. Spector and Flint’s investigations collide as they find themselves trapped by the snowstorm where anyone could be the next victim – or the killer...

More information about Tom Mead can be found on his website. You can also find him on X @TomMeadAuthor, on Instagram @tommeadauthor and on Facebook.

             

Graham Hurley - So why give a bed to someone you hate?

Dead Ground is the ninth novel in my Spoils of War collection. Hunting for one of those backwaters in the seven-year swirl of World War Two violence, my eye alighted on something called Operation Felix, of which – to my shame – I had never heard.

Felix turned out to be Hitler’s bid to bring his year of sensational victories to a pleasing end. In just two brief months in the summer of 1940, he had brought country after country to their knees. Norwegian, Danish, Belgian and lastly French clocks were all readjusted to Berlin time, and now came the icing on the German cake. With Franco’s help, Werhmacht troops would head south through Spain and kick the Brits off the Rock of Gibraltar. And so, the Mediterranean would become a German lake.

Perfect. Except it did not quite work out that way. Assuming Generalissimo Franco’s compliance was a mistake, and months of wrangling would follow but Felix, like any bold idea, had an afterlife that was hard to extinguish and so plans went ahead regardless.

My job as a historical novelist is to nurture a bunch of fictional characters, introduce them to individuals who actually existed, and then see where the chemistry leads. Thus, the pages of Dead Ground partly belong to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence network; to Sir Samuel Hoare, our ambassador in Madrid; to Heinrich Himmler, in charge of the SS; and to Franco himself. 

But exalted company like this must make space for Tam Moncrieff, an ex-Royal Marine poached by MI5; for Carlos Ortega, a mercenary sniper hideously disfigured by a rebel bomb in Madrid; and for Annie Wrenne, a young bi-lingual nomad recovering from a disastrous affair. Together, this cast of worthies – some fictional, others not - must somehow keep Gibraltar safe in British hands.

What to do? Lin and I boarded the ferry to Santander, and thence a series of Spanish coaches that took us in a vast seven thousand kilometre circle the length and breadth of the country to check out key locations. The trip swallowed nearly a month and was unforgettable.

I could bore you with a series of traveller vignettes: the lengths we went to in search of bullet-pocked monastery walls, of views from this key trench location or that, of the remains of a seven-building in Murcia that had once housed thousands of Republican refugees, of the afternoon a shelf full of wine bottles fell on my head, but all this fluff would miss the point.  Because no one really wants to admit that the years of Spanish violence ever happened. Go to museum after museum and the timelines on the wall leapfrog the years between 1936 and 1939. There’s just a blank.  Whoever wants to celebrate the Spanish killing each other?

And so, the diligent researcher has somehow to coax native strangers into talking about something they would prefer to forget. Bad Spanish does not help, and neither does age, but somehow the itch of memory has to be addressed, and just occasionally it works.

We were in Alicante. Terrible things had happened there but no one these days could possibly believe it. Except, if you look hard, there are clues. On 25 May 1938, the Fascist Italian bombers levelled the Mercado Central, killed around three hundred people and injured nearly a thousand more. That single attack spilled more Spanish blood than any other raid.

Alicante has restored and opened one of the city’s bomb shelters and amongst the commemorative plaques on the wall of the current market square is a clock stopped at precisely 11.20, the moment the first bomb fell. This kind of remembrance is exceptional in today’s Spain, and we were looking up at the clock, when I felt a light pressure on my shoulder. The Spanish are very polite, and the stranger was very old.

‘You want to know about the war?’ His accent was thick.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Why?

For a long moment I was robbed for an answer. Then I began to explain about the book, the books, the series as a whole. His eyes never left mine.

‘Why?’ he asked again. ‘What business is it of yours?’’ He gestured towards the clock. ‘These people are all dead. Either then or since. So, leave them in peace.’ He smiled. ‘War is never our friend. So why give a bed to someone you hate?’

So why give a bed to someone you hate? Good question. Oddly unresolved. 

Dead Ground by Graham Hurley (Head of Zeus) Out now in Hardback £20.00

1936. Anglo-Breton translator Annie Wrenne is working in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Annie becomes a nurse on the front line, but after falling in love with a patient, she ends up pregnant – and abandoned – by a man she thought she knew. Annie passes the rest of the war in a haze, her only consolation her relationship with mysterious Republican fighter Carlos Ortega. Annie finds herself caught up in Ortega’s world, a web of intrigue, which leads to her recruitment into MI5. On her first mission, Annie must pose as Ortega's wife and head to Algeciras. Hitler’s Operation Felix – his plan to control the Mediterranean and force Churchill to the negotiating table – has been set into motion, and the 'couple' must help prevent the Nazis from seizing Gibraltar. But Ortega has secretly been working for the Nationalists, part of Madrid’s Fifth Column. If it falls to Annie – and Ortega – to save the day for the Allied cause, can she trust a man who has changed sides yet again?

 You can find more information about Graham and his books on his website. You can follow Graham Hurley on X @Seasidepicture

Why We Love The Bad Guy by Rachel Wolf

Why are we so obsessed with the bad guys? There are so many books and films where the antagonists are more compelling than the protagonists. From Satan in Paradise Lost to Tyler Durden in Fight Club, I do enjoy loving a baddie. 

Five Nights is a novel set on a cruise ship, where a billionaire and his family and guests sail from Portsmouth to New York. Over the course of the cruise, secrets spill out and someone will die. 

I wanted to write a novel about the hugely wealthy – particularly those who are selfish and entitled – and look at how badly they’d behave when something threatens their wealth and lifestyle. I also wanted to watch how characters change when tempted with great riches. Greed is a powerful motivator! 

In writing about these characters, I also wanted the novel to be one people enjoyed reading. Do we love bad guys? I decided we did. But why?

I suppose one of the reasons we feel drawn to antagonists is because of a secret desire to release all the shackles on our own behaviour. It’s freeing to live vicariously through fictional characters, enjoying bad behaviour with no consequences. We spend so much of our lives trying to live well – obeying rules and being aware of the importance of trying to get things right. 

There are a few characters in Five Nights who don’t think twice about what they say. They never spend time considering the consequences of their behaviour and trying to get things right – and this was a lot of fun to write. They are rude, selfish, and they talk to other characters in ways I’d never speak to someone in real life. Sometimes when I write, I choose characteristics from people I know – certain tells or manners of speech that make someone distinct. I also put together mood boards with images of how they might dress, and things they may say, eat, watch or places they’d visit. I did this quite carefully for the Scarmardos because I just don’t have the usual pool of people in my day to day life for inspiration. I needed their terrible qualities to be exaggerated and inflated, as much as their wealth.

I think another aspect of the appeal of the ‘bad guy’ is confidence, although this runs a tight line with conceit. There’s nothing quite as attractive as a lack of self-doubt. People tend to be plagued by self-doubt. We question ourselves repeatedly, we play over scenes from our lives in our heads like a bad rehearsal. How wonderful if we never doubted ourselves at all! Characters who never question themselves, however, are often narcissistic and ultimately selfish and sometimes cruel. When Hugh Grant went from the bumbling Charlie of Five Weddings to the charming Daniel Cleaver of Bridget Jones, he’d never seemed more attractive. He never once pauses to stumble over his words or repeatedly apologise for his inadequacies. 

This is certainly true of some of the characters in Five Nights. They live a life focused on their own pleasure, no matter how it might affect others. They don’t second guess their decisions. This is as attractive as it is repellent and it was great fun to play with when writing the novel. No one wants to marry a Daniel Cleaver, but a mini-break could be a lot of fun.

Emily, my protagonist in Five Nights, finds herself briefly the object of some love-bombing by the Scarmardos. Adoration and flattery can be very appealing – these men certainly know how to turn on the charm when they need to. In practice, love-bombing can be a very selfish tactic. It’s often done in order to deflect, or to get someone on side and to reel them in, so that you can behave badly later and get away with it! Yet to be the object of love-bombing, bombarded with charm and attention, does have its moment. Emily needs to be on her toes. She is out of her comfort zone, surrounded by threatening letters, mysterious happenings and threatening behaviour. 

Attention, and its sudden withdrawal, can also make relationships seem more exciting. The on/off element, the will he call question. Reliable, steadfast partners might be what we want in real life, but on the page, we want something a little more exciting. We go on rollercoasters to feel our sense of balance upended, and we search for fictional bad guys for much the same reason. 

Writing Five Nights gave me ample opportunity to study bad behaviour and to try to work out why it can seem so appealing. I hope readers enjoy reading about my entitled characters. They are certainly characters you love to hate!

Five Nights by Rachel Wolf (Head of Zeus) out now at £9.99 as a paperback original 

A powerful family. A luxury cruise. A killer on board… You're invited to join the infamous Scarmardo family on a five night voyage aboard their glamorous new ship. It's a chance to see your best friend, Belle, newly married to Mattia Scarmardo. You haven't seen her in years. Five - On the first night, you'll be wrapped up in the glamour of the ship. Four - On the second night, you'll wonder who is sending you threatening notes. Three - On the third night, someone will die. Two - On the fourth night, you'll discover that someone knows the truth of what you did. One - On the last night, you'll be left for dead. Will you make it back to shore alive.