Merle Nygate on Why Spy Fiction

The first realistic espionage stories I ever read was Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden short stories. The narrator, a writer, trails around the Italian lakes during inclement weather and visits agents who are supposed to be gathering information or intel as we like to call it now. The agents are feckless; they lie and they cheat and the work itself is tiring and often dull. To me, it felt real. It was real, Maugham was recruited to run agents during World War I.

Later, much later, I read Graham Greene’s The Human Factor and in the author’s notes Greene described how he wanted to write about spies with pensions. Again, that felt real. 

But although I have written multiple genres and mediums, everything from fantasy to factual comedy to drama. I felt unable to peruse ideas o ideas about espionage and betrayal with any semblance of confidence for a long little. I recognise that as a writer you ned to know where you're ready to realise a particular idea, believe that you have the experience and the skills to make what you have in your mind the best it can be. I was determined that if I was going to attempt to write a spy novel it would have to feel and as realistic as the espionage that I admired.

For many years that particular goal seemed a long way off until the ambition was reignited when I read. Tom Rob Smith's Child 44. Child 44 is set in Stalinist Russia and is written from the point of view of a NKVD agent who is morally compromised.

It's a brilliant book. The setting is the miserable post-war deprivation of 1950s Soviet Union. The characters are terrified of who will betray them and they are all desperately trying to survive. When I reached the end of the book, I read the author's biography and was astonished that the author had achieved this level of authenticity solely on the basis of research.

Child 44 was inspirational. 

I now needed a story. 

I decided to write about the Mossad, the Israeli version of MI6 for several reasons. Among them was that while I think The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is an almost perfect book and I’m a great admirer of the rest of the Smiley series, I felt that le Carré, in The Little Drummer Girl hadn’t written either Jews or women particularly well and it bothered me. I found the needy and neurotic Charlie irritating and the dour, brooding case officer hard to believe

Another reason for choosing Mossad was cowardice and expediency; I don’t think I could attempt to better what le Carré and Deighton wrote about Cold War British intelligence. Nor what Charles Beaumont does now for MI6 and what David McCloskey and I. S. Berry do for the CIA. There also aren’t many authors writing about the Mossad despite all the mystique about this particular intelligence service.

But I still didn’t have a story.

I read and re-read le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl. Then I moved to The Honourable Schoolboy, Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Then Len Deighton’s Bernard Samson series and as I was reading I was trying to identify what it was that I liked about the narratives, why they worked and why they didn’t. I also watched Homeland episodes back-to-back and The Americans. 

It was while I was noodling around on the CIA website looking for reviews of spy fiction books that I saw a mention of a non-fiction book called Gideon’s Spies by Gordon Thomas. 

I have since been told by those who apparently know that there are inaccuracies in the book but there are also plenty of facts. It was my lodestar. I went through the book in forensic detail; marked it up, made detailed notes and I extrapolated the information I needed for a second document. From that document I brainstormed and identified the different types of true stories in espionage. All the facts suggested story ideas. There were disinformation and recruitment operations that had rich story possibilities and, of course, the ubiquitous, ‘find the mole’ story. 

From the list I brainstormed 13 different scenarios ranging from moles, recruitment, assassination and disinformation 

That was the beginning of the Amiram series. After that, of course, it wrote itself!

Merle Nygate’s latest novel, The Protocols of Spying, is out now as a £10.99 paperback from No Exit Press, part of Bedford Square Publishers.

In the aftermath of Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, Mossad's London station chief Eli Amiram is fighting battles on all fronts. When his ambitious rival plans an assassination on British soil - supposedly authorized by Trump supporters - Eli suspects a deeper conspiracy. Meanwhile, British intelligence asset Petra is hunting for redemption. Tasked with recruiting Wasim Al-Arikhi - whose sister she failed to save from becoming a suicide bomber - Petra's drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Can Wasim be trusted or has she become a target? As Eli and Petra's paths converge, they discover that in the shadow world of international espionage, the greatest threats often come from within. They must confront not just their enemies, but their own moral choices. A sophisticated spy thriller that weaves together tradecraft, betrayal and the human cost of intelligence work.

More information about the author and her work can be found on her website. You can find her on Facebook @merle.nygate and on X @merlenygate and on Instagram @mnygate 

The return of George Smiley's Circus and stage adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Press Release

George Smiley’s ‘Circus’ returns: with The Taper Man the new novel from John le Carré’s son, Nick Harkaway, and the first stage adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold to London’s West End 

John le Carré’s son, writer Nick Harkaway, announces a new novel, The Taper Man, featuring his father’s iconic spy, George Smiley, for publication in 2026. The new work will continue the plotline explored in Karla’s Choice, Harkaway’s critically acclaimed, Sunday Times bestseller (published in hardback in Oct 2024 and in paperback on 22 May 2025). Simultaneously announced today, le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, will premiere in the West End this autumn. Adapted by award-winning playwright and screenwriter David Eldridge and directed by Jeremy Herrin, this is the first novel by the undisputed master of the modern spy genre to be brought to life on London’s stage. Following a sold out premiere at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2024, the play will be produced by Ink Factory and Second Half Productions in association with Nica Burns. Smiley’s American investigation.

In his new novel, Nick Harkaway will send George Smiley for the first time on an operation to America, pursuing an old communist network across the West Coast. It’s 1965, eighteen months after the events of Karla’s Choice, and within the missing decade between the two instalments in the Smiley Saga, The Spy who Came in from the Cold and of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War, Smiley finds himself dealing with a crisis involving the ‘Cousins’, which throws him once again in a struggle to find a path in the dark. To whom does he owe his allegiance? To this investigation in America or to the wider geopolitical gameboard? Viking’s publishing director Harriet Bourton and commissioning editor Edd Kirke acquired UK & Commonwealth rights from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown and agent to the le Carré estate. Nick Harkaway is represented by Patrick Walsh at Pew Literary.

Harriet Bourton, Viking Publishing Director, says: ‘Karla’s Choice proved to be one of the great espionage novels of recent times and it’s so incredibly exciting to be continuing George Smiley’s story with The Taper Man. The reader couldn’t be in more expert or ingenious hands with Nick. He has taken on a legacy and made it his own, and we are so ambitious about reaching a huge audience with this extraordinary new addition to the iconic literary world of John le Carré.’ 

Nick Harkaway says: ‘It’s an enormous pleasure to be working with George Smiley again, this time following the breadcrumbs of a messy debacle in Helsinki all the way to the US west coast, uncovering the truth of Karla’s 1950s network in California, and pursuing Roy Bland into the USSR. It’s time to meet our American Cousins.’ 

Smiley to be brought to life in West End production 

A global bestseller for over six decades and named one of TIME Magazine’s All-Time 100 Novels, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold will be adapted for the stage @sohoplace, running from 17 November 2025 until 21 February 2026. This production will star Rory Keenan (Somewhere Boy, The Regime) and Screen International Star of Tomorrow Agnes O’Casey (Lies We Tell, Black Doves) playing disillusioned British intelligence officer Alec Leamas and the idealistic, left-wing librarian Liz Gold. John Ramm (King Lear, Wolf Hall/Bring Up The Bodies) and Gunnar Cauthery (Dear England, Mack & Mabel) will take on George Smiley and Hans-Dieter Mundt. 

Clare Cornwell, Director of the John le Carre estate says, ‘The John le Carre estate is delighted to be celebrating the return of the Circus and George Smiley through these two new projects: Nick’s new novel and the first ever stage play of one of John le Carre’s works coming to the West End.’ 

Nick Harkaway Picture - © Ula Soltys

John le Carré picture ©Nadav Kandar

CrimeFest ’25 to Feature Exclusive le Carré Event

 

Le Carré’s sons feature in event in honour of their father.

CrimeFest, one of the UK’s leading crime fiction conventions, will feature an exclusive John le Carré event featuring the author’s two sons.

Considered one of the greatest novelists of the postwar era, the ‘Ghost of Honour’ panel sees le Carré’s son, Nick Harkaway, discuss his latest novel, Karla’s Choice. In the book, Nick brought back one of his father’s most famous literary creations – George Smiley.

The panel also welcomes Le Carre’s older son, the film producer Simon Cornwell, who is the CEO and co-founder of the independent studio, The Ink Factory. He is currently executive producing the much-anticipated second season of The Night Manager for Amazon and the BBC, starring Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman.

Further guests for the panel are to be announced.

Director and co-founder of CrimeFest, Adrian Muller, said: “As a genre, crime fiction dominates our TV and film screens, and John le Carré is undoubtedly a seminal influence. It’s a huge honour to welcome his sons. We’re excited to discuss Nick’s acclaimed novel, and to get an exclusive look into the upcoming adaptations of le Carré’s iconic novels with Simon.”

CrimeFest, sponsored by Specsavers, is hosted from 15 to 18 May 2025 at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel, when up to 150 authors are expected to descend on Bristol appearing in over 50 panels. It attracts regular delegates from as far as Australia, the Far East, Canada, the United States, and mainland Europe.

Also confirmed for 2025 is the Canadian mystery writer, Cathy Ace. Cathy's Cait Morgan Mysteries have been optioned for TV by the production company, Free@Last TV, which is behind the hit series, Agatha Raisin.

Vaseem Khan, chair of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), has also been confirmed as 2025’s Gala Dinner’s 'Leader of Toasts' for the 2025 CrimeFest awards. Vaseem is author of the Malabar House historical crime series set in Bombay. His first psychological thriller, The Girl in Cell A is out in May 2025.

Considered as one of the most democratic of crime fiction events, CrimeFest is open to all published authors and known for its inclusive approach. To appear on a panel, authors – or their publishers - simply sign up as a delegate to take part. Authors have until the end of November to sign up to be featured in the 2025 convention.

The convention began in 2008 and attracts readers, fans, editors, publishers, and reviewers.

Other confirmed names for ’25 include: Andrew Child, who has taken over writing the Jack Reacher novels from his brother Lee; veteran novelist and Diamond Dagger recipient John Harvey, who has written over 100 books, including his series of jazz-influenced Charlie Resnick novels, and Kate Ellis, winner of the CWA Dagger in the Library award.

First introduced in 2022, the CrimeFest bursary for a crime fiction author of colour returns for a fourth year. The bursary covers the costs of a weekend pass to the convention, with a night’s accommodation and panel appearance. Previous recipients include Saima Mir and Elizabeth Chakrabarty. Entries for 2025 are now open.

The convention also continues its Community Outreach Programme. In partnership with the independent Max Minerva’s Bookshop and participating publishers, CrimeFest gifts thousands of pounds of crime fiction books for children and young adults to school libraries.

With thanks to Specsavers, librarians, students, and those on benefits are offered significantly discounted tickets.

To find out more, or to book your spot as a delegate, go to: https://www.crimefest.com/

 

10 new additions to the Penguin Green Crime Classics.

Penguin have announced 10 new additions to their Penguin Green Classics. The books are due to be published on 6 June 2024. Two specific new additions in particular have been out of print in the UK for quite some time. These are - 

The Chinese Gold Murders by Robert Van Gulik

An intricate, puzzle-like murder mystery set in Imperial China, featuring the indefatigable Judge Dee. A fantastically enjoyable tale by the master of the Tang dynasty mystery! Judge Dee is about to step into the shoes of a dead man…Most people would refuse the job of Magistrate at the lonely port town of Peng-lai – especially as the last occupant of the post has been found poisoned in his library, his papers missing. But Judge Dee is not most men. He arrives ready to get to the truth, only to find his life complicated even further by a missing bride, a vanished artisan, a man-eating tiger and an evil conspiracy. 

Robert Van Gulik was a Dutch orientalist, diplomat, musician, and writer, best known for the Judge Dee historical mysteries, the protagonist of which he borrowed from the 18th-century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An.

I Married a Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich

 A wild and wildly compelling noir novel about a train crash and a case of a mistaken identity. What if you woke up to discover everyone thought you were somebody else? Pregnant and abandoned, all Helen Georgesson has is five dollars and a one-way ticket to San Francisco. Then she is involved in a train crash, and regains consciousness only to discover that she has given birth – and, in a bizarre twist of fate, has been mistaken for somebody else. Helen decides to claim this opportunity to make a new life for herself and her son. But eventually her past will catch up with her, in terrible ways…

Cornell Woolrich (1903-68) was one of the most admired and influential of all 20th century American crime writers. His work inspired many films, including most famously The Leopard Man, Phantom Lady, Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Mississippi Mermaid and Union City. He led a strange and often very unhappy life, latterly as a recluse in a Manhattan hotel.

The list of ten new titles is as follows for the new Penguin Green Crime Classics 

The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin

From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

I Married a Dead Man By Cornell Woolrich

The Labyrinth Makers by Anthony Price

The Gold Mask by Edogawa Rampo

The Underground Man by Ross Macdonald

We Have Always Lived in a Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Night Manager by John Le Carre

Night at the Crossroads by Georges Simenon

The Chinese Gold Murders by Robert Van Gulik

The Return of Penguin Greens

 

From the 1930s onwards crime novels published by Penguin had covers using a lot of green ink. This led to a clear distinction between two different kinds of novel – effectively all other novels (orange) and crime novels (green). This had the unintended effect of implying that these were different reading experiences or had different statuses when, of course, some ‘crime’ novels are simply among the best novels of any kind whereas orange novels came to seem more middle- to-upper brow even if they might be in practice be much less well written, ambition and plausible than novels by Dorothy M. Sayers, say, or Raymond Chandler. 

Famously it was on returning from a visit to Agatha Christie that Allen Lane, standing on a platform at Exeter station, had the idea for Penguin paperbacks and in the 1950s he once celebrated Christie’s birthday by printing in one go a million copies of her books (10 different novels x 100,000).

Crime of every description has therefore, from the most horrific to the most genteel, always stood at the heart of the entire Penguin enterprise. For reasons not now clear in the 1980s it was decided to drop the green spine and publish all fiction with an orange spine. Then design moved on again, often restricting the Penguin element to the bird logo itself and only keeping hints of Penguin orange. Around the same time light blue Pelicans were also dropped, with the Penguin colour schemes restricted to the black-spined Penguin Classics or the various shades of eau-de-Nil and grey for Penguin Modern Classics.

I have published various series as a Penguin employee over the years—Great Ideas, Little Black Classics and others—and it is really almost with a sense of embarrassment that it has taken until 2023 to realize that one of the most potent and fun traditional Penguin colour codes was simply lying around waiting to be reused: Green for Crime. I mention this because it is at some level shameful that it should have taken so many years to come up with something so straightforward that it barely qualifies as a concept or an idea: why didn’t we do this a decade ago? Two decades?

Lurking within Penguin Modern Classics we already published some of the greatest crime writers – Dorothy B. Hughes’s sensational In a Lonely Place, Eric Ambler’s great pre-War thrillers, Chester Himes’s wonderful, frenzied fantasies of Harlem, Ross Macdonald’s novels of southern California’s squalor lurking under the pretty surface. I am myself responsible at Penguin for the backlist of two great writers in the genre, John le Carré and Len Deighton, and yet had not noticed until very recently that these could be assembled into a matchless series of the greatest crime writers.

Once, very belatedly, we decided to proceed with the idea it seemed a shame not to add other writers. We already published Georges Simenon’s extraordinary books, of which he wrote so many (and at such a consistent level of excellence) that it would make sense to showcase a couple simply to give readers a way into his enormous oeuvre. Josephine Tey’s novels had just come out of copyright, so this provided the opportunity to publish her superb, unsettling The Franchise Affair and Brat Farrar. We also had C.S. Forester’s wonderfully nasty little shocker Payment Deferred about a murderous South London miser (written long before Forester became famous for the Hornblower novels).

For the series to be fresh though it needed some new discoveries and a lot of time was spent reading sometimes terrible books (please do not read anything by Peter Cheyney!) but also books which had just aged badly. I was particularly sorry that Helen MacInnes now seemed so lacklustre as my parents had loved her novels of international espionage when they were published – but now they seemed to consist predominantly of people endlessly walking around, having meals and checking into hotels, with very occasional outbursts of unengaging and tasteful violence.

Battling through some quite neither-here-nor-there stuff though made it much easier to spot wonderful things. Many recent crime novelists remain in print because of Kindle editions or print-on-demand versions, but it was very exciting to find two giants of British thriller writing from the 1970s and 1980s, Anthony Price and Michael Gilbert, available to be discovered. Both giants in their day, their work still has an ingenuity and excellence which has in no way dated – so Price’s Other Paths to Glory and Gilbert’s Game Without Rules joined the list. And I was tipped off to try Dick Lochte, whose 1985 debut Sleeping Dog is a classic, extremely funny piece of neo-noir with the simple but useful advice: if you are a jaded private investigator in L.A. and a girl on roller-skates asks you to help her find her missing dog, don’t say yes. The other great find was the Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo (real name Tarō Hirai – his pen name derives from the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allen Poe). Between the wars he wrote a number of thrilling and disturbing classics, some with a wonderful Tintin-like flavour (Gold Mask and The Black Lizard) and others with the depravity dialled up (Beast in the Shadows). All three of these are in the series. 

We are now finishing work on a third set of ten, including some just wonderfully recommendable stuff! Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Ian Fleming’s From Russia with Love, Anthony Price’s The Labyrinth Makers and John le Carré’s The Night Manager. Best of all (but of course they are all best) is a long forgotten classic of New York City noir, The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin, set in a gloomy wartime Manhattan and Coney Island. The fate of its decent psychiatrist hero as he unwillingly wades deeper and deeper into an inexplicable, surreal and truly horrible urban underbelly has to be experienced to be believed.

Here are the three sets, with the third not published until June 2024:

1. Davis Grubb NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
2. Edogawa Rampo BEAST IN THE SHADOWS
3. Dorothy B. Hughes IN A LONELY PLACE
4. Josephine Tey THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR
5. Eric Ambler JOURNEY INTO FEAR
6. John le Carré CALL FOR THE DEAD
7. Georges Simenon MAIGRET AND THE HEADLESS CORPSE
8. Len Deighton SS-GB
9. Ross Macdonald THE DROWNING POOL
10. Chester Himes COTTON COMES TO HARLEM
11. Dick Lochte SLEEPING DOG
12. Raymond Chandler THE BIG SLEEP & FAREWELL, MY LOVELY
13. Anthony Price OTHER PATHS TO GLORY
14. Michael Gilbert GAME WITHOUT RULES
15. Georges Simenon MAIGRET’S REVOLVER
16. C.S.Forester PAYMENT DEFERRED
17. Edogawa Rampo THE BLACK LIZARD
18. Eric Ambler THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS
19. Josephine Tey BRAT FARRAR
20. John le Carré TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY
21. Anthony Price THE LABYRINTH MAKERS
22. Chester Himes A RAGE IN HARLEM
23. John le Carré THE NIGHT MANAGER
24. Edogawa Rampo GOLD MASK
25. Ian Fleming FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
26. Georges Simenon NIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS
27. John Franklin Bardin THE DEADLY PERCHERON
28. Ross Macdonald THE UNDERGROUND MAN
29. Shirley Jackson WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE
30. Cornell Woolrich I MARRIED A DEAD MAN

Any suggestions anyone might have for unfairly out-of-print crime and espionage classics would be warmly received!

Simon Winder is the Publishing Director at Penguin Press. 

Penguin Classic Crime & Espionage -- 2nd tranche coming soon!

Reviving the iconic green Penguin Crime paperbacks, first published 75 years ago, this new series celebrates the endless variety and unique appeal of one of fiction’s great genres. The series, which continues to grow, is a careful selection of the very best from Penguin Classics’ extensive archives, combined with new discoveries unearthed from the golden age of crime and well overdue a new readership. The first tranche of titles, released in Summer 2023, took us from a sunshine soaked, yet bullet ridden California to a macabre Tokyo flat. Now the second tranche is here to take us through to Autumn with the best fireside reading for armchair detectives.

The series is carefully curated by author and Penguin Press publishing director Simon Winder, who is available for publicity: “These books are united by atmosphere, anxiety, a strong sense of time and place, and an often-appalling ingenuity, both on behalf of the authors and their characters. They have also all aged very well, gaining an additional pleasure from shifts in manners, clothes, wisecracks, politics, murder weapons and potential alibis.”

‘I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room’

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely | Raymond Chandler | 1939 & 1940

There are no streets meaner than those of L.A.'s underworld - but luckily one detective has more than his fair share of street smarts. Here, in the first two novels featuring the immortal creation Philip Marlowe, we see the cynical sleuth taking on a nasty case of blackmail involving a Californian millionaire and his two devil-may-care daughters; then dealing with a missing nightclub crooner (plus several gangsters with a habit of shooting first and talking later).

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 but moved to England with his family when he was twelve. During the Depression era, he seriously turned his hand to writing, and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, followed six years later by his first novel, The Big Sleep. 

Game Without Rules | Michael Gilbert | 1967

In a peaceful Kent village, Mr Behrens lives with his aunt at the Old Rectory, where he plays chess and keeps bees. His friend Mr Calder lives nearby with Rasselas, a golden deerhound of unnatural intelligence. No one would suspect that they are in fact working for British Intelligence, carrying out the jobs that are too dangerous for anyone else to handle - whether it's wiping out traitors, Soviet spies or old Nazis - in these gloriously entertaining stories.

Michael Gilbert was born in Lincolnshire in 1912. He worked as a lawyer and wrote his novels exclusively when commuting by train, 500 words a day in 50-minute stints. He was made a CBE in 1980, awarded a Diamond Dagger for the Crime Writers Association for lifetime achievement, and named a 'grandmaster' by the Mystery Writers of America in 1988. 

Maigret’s Revolver | Georges Simenon | 1952

Inspector Maigret receives a call from his wife to say he has a visitor at their apartment. But when he gets home, the young man has already gone, along with Maigret's prized Smith and Wesson .45. The trail to find the culprit - and the woman who may become his victim - takes Maigret across Paris and all the way to the Savoy Hotel in London. But getting to the truth may be even more complicated than he had first imagined.

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903. He is best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

Sleeping Dog | Dick Lochte | 1985

Leo Bloodworth, 'the Bloodhound', is a world-weary L.A. gumshoe with a reputation for finding anything - and a low tolerance of precocious teenagers. Serendipity Dahlquist is a precocious teenager. When the headstrong, roller-skating fourteen-year-old asks Bloodworth to help track down her lost dog Groucho, it leads this oddest of odd couples into the dark criminal underworld of the Mexican mafia, and into more trouble than they'd bargained for.

Dick Lochte's first novel, Sleeping Dog was published to enormous acclaim. He was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times for several decades, and formerly president of both the American Crime Writers League and the Private Eye Writers of America. Born in New Orleans, Lochte now lives on the West Coast.

Brat Farrar | Josephine Tey | 1949

Twenty-one-year-old Brat Farrar is an orphan, alone in the world without friends or family. So when he is offered the unexpected chance to impersonate Patrick Ashby, the long-lost heir to a vast fortune on a country estate, he agrees. Brat is the spitting image of Patrick, who disappeared years ago. At first it seems Brat can pull off this incredible deception, until he starts to realise that he is in far greater peril than he ever imagined.

Josephine Tey began to write full-time after the successful publication of her first novel, The Man in the Queue (1929), which introduced Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. It wasn't until after the Second World War that the majority of her crime novels were published. Born in Inverness, Tey died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | John le Carré | 1974

George Smiley, formerly of the Secret Intelligence Service, is contemplating his new life in retirement when he is called back on an unexpected mission. His task is to hunt down an agent implanted by Moscow Central at the very heart of the Circus - one who has been buried deep there for years. The dogged, troubled Smiley can discount nobody from being the traitor, even if it is one of those closest to him.

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. After a peripatetic childhood, a spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6), during which he published his first novel. He gained a worldwide reputation for his subsequent books. Le Carré died in December 2020. 

The Black Lizard | Edogawa Rampo | 1934

They call her the 'Dark Angel'. Queen of Tokyo's underworld, Mme Midorikawa is famed for her beauty, her jewels and the tattoo of a black lizard on her arm. Crime is so easy for her that she warns her victims in advance. When a wealthy jewel merchant receives letters saying his precious daughter Sanae is about to be kidnapped, he entrusts the renowned detective Akechi Kogoro to protect her. But he may have met his deadliest adversary yet...

Edogawa Rampo was the pseudonym of Taro Hirai, generally viewed as the greatest of all Japanese suspense and mystery authors. He was a prolific novelist and short story writer. Much influenced by writers such as Conan Doyle, Chesterton and Wells, his pseudonym is a Japanese transliteration of Edgar Allen Poe's name. Many of his works have been made into films. 

Payment Deferred | C.S. Forester | 1940

Bank clerk William Marble is facing financial ruin - until a visit from a wealthy young relative, a bottle of Cyanide and a shovel offer him an unexpected solution. But there is no such thing as the perfect murder. Gradually Marble becomes poisoned by guilt and fear, and his entire family corrupted. Sooner or later his deed will catch up with him, as events spiral out of control in the most unpredictable of ways...

C. S. Forester was born in 1899 in Cairo, where his father was a government official. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he entered the Ministry of Information. As well as the famous Horatio Hornblower series, his novels include The African Queen, adapted into the famous film, and crime novels Plain Murder and The Pursued.

The Mask of Dimitrios | Eric Ambler | 1939

English writer Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when a police inspector tells him about the infamous master criminal Dimitrios, long wanted by the law, whose body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus. Immediately fascinated, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios' steps across Europe to gather material for a new book, but instead finds himself descending into a terrifying underworld of international espionage, Balkan drug dealers, unscrupulous businessmen and fatal treachery - one he may not be able to escape.

Eric Ambler was born in London. He studied engineering but left college and became a copywriter in the advertising industry, before publishing his great spy thrillers and working as a screenwriter. His profound influence on the espionage genre has been acknowledged by writers including Ian Fleming and John le Carré.

Other Paths to Glory | Anthony Price | 1974

Paul Mitchell is a young military historian whose life is changed forever when two men, Dr Audley and Colonel Butler of the MOD, visit him with a fragment of a German trench map - and a lot of questions. Then somebody tries to kill him. Paul, his life now in danger, agrees to go underground on a mission to solve a dangerous mystery: what really happened during the battle of the Somme in 1916? And why does somebody want to keep it secret?

Anthony Price was born in Hertfordshire. He began as a crime reviewer on the Oxford Mail and ending as editor of the Oxford Times. He won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger for his first novel The Labyrinth Makers, and the Gold Dagger for Other Paths to Glory, which was later shortlisted for the Dagger of Daggers Award for the best crime novel of the last 50 years.

Penguin Modern Classics to publish three Eric Ambler novels

On 26th January 2023, Penguin Modern Classics will publish three wildly enjoyable novels from the father of the spy thriller, Eric Ambler: Passage of Arms, The Light of Day and A Kind of Anger. Ambler is often said to have invented the modern suspense novel, and his disciples include John le Carré, Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene and Len Deighton. These are a must-read for fans of the genre.

Eric Ambler (1909-98) was born in London to parents who were part-time entertainers. He studied engineering but left college without taking a degree and became a copywriter in the advertising industry. Between 1937 and 1940, he published his great anti-fascist spy thrillers: Uncommon Danger, Epitaph for a Spy, Cause for Alarm, The Mask of Dimitrios, and Journey into Fear. In 1940, he joined the Royal Artillery and was later transferred to the army film unit. After the war he worked as a screenwriter in England and Hollywood and married his second wife, a leading Hollywood producer. Passage of Arms, The Light of Day and A Kind of Anger are his post-war novels.

A Kind of Anger

The last time anyone saw Lucia Bernardi, she was driving at top speed away from a Swiss villa - leaving the body of her murdered Iraqi lover behind. Now she has vanished, along with a potentially explosive set of papers, and disgraced journalist Piet Maas has been sent to follow her trail to the South of France. But finding her is just the start of his problems. Soon, amid a cast of con men, secret agents and revolutionaries, he must decide whether to land the scoop of his lifetime - or follow Lucia into ever more dangerous waters.

A Passage to Arms

An Indian clerk, Girija Krishnan, sees the opportunity of his lifetime when he stumbles on an abandoned cache of arms hidden in the Malayan jungle. If he can sell the weapons, he will be able to achieve his lifelong dream of owning a bus company - although the penalty for gun-running is death. Soon his decision becomes the catalyst for a chain of events involving an entrepreneurial Chinese family, a corrupt Colonel and, finally, a naïve couple of American tourists who find themselves horribly out of their depth.

The Light of Day

Small-time hustler Arthur Abdel Simpson ekes out a living in Athens by robbing gullible tourists. But when an attempted theft backfires, he finds himself out-smarted and blackmailed into driving a highly suspicious car across the border to Istanbul. Then the Turkish secret police get involved, and Simpson becomes embroiled in something far deeper, and more dangerous, than he could imagine. Featuring a heart-stopping jewel heist, this compulsive, morally complex thriller became the basis for the classic filmTopkapi.

In The St Hilda's Spotlight:- Nadine Matheson

Name:- Nadine Matheson

Job:- Criminal Solicitor and author

Website:- https://www.nadinematheson.com/

Twitter:- @nadinematheson 

Introduction:-

Nadine Matheson is the author of the best selling D I Henley and the Serial Crimes Unit series. In 2016, she won the City University Crime Writing Competition and in 2019 The Jigsaw Man was won by HQ (HarperCollins) in a six-publisher auction. Her second novel The Binding Room was published in July 2022.

Current book? (This can either be the current book that you are reading or writing)

Reading: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Writing: Henley Book 3

Favourite book

American Tabloid by James Ellroy 

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why? 

Aaaron Stampler from Primal Fear. He was accused of murder and his defence was that it wasn’t but him but his other personality. I would like to sitting in front of him to see the moment when he would switch personalities. Stampler is both fascinating and terrifying. A great character.

Bruce Wayne/Batman. I’m the biggest comic book fan and I couldn’t think of a better guest. It would be interesting as to who would turn up to dinner. Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy or the world’s greatest detective, the dark knight himself, Batman.

How do you relax?

I love going out to dinner and also lying in my sun lounger in the garden with a good book and a cocktail.

Which book do you wish you had written and why? 

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré. I just think that its perfect. Perfect characterisation, world building and plot. 

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer.

Don’t ever give up. Tell your stories and let your imagination fly. 

How would you describe your series characters? 

Authentic but extremely complex who are all trying to create the equilibrium with their careers and personal lives. There’s not one character who hasn’t been affected emotionally by the cases they’ve worked on. 

With Town and Country: Green Lanes to Mean Streets being the theme at St Hilda's this year, Where is your favourite town and where is your favourite country? Why have you chosen these?

London is actually my favourite city because its home but also richly diverse and I love how the past intertwines with the present in its streets and buildings.

Grenada is my favourite country as its where my family are from and its home away from home and the beaches are spectacular. 

What are you looking forward to at St Hilda's?

Spending the weekend with writers that I have admired for years and also passionate crime readers. 

The Binding Room by Nadine Matheson (HarperCollins) Out Now

In this room, no one can hear you scream...The Serial Crimes Unit are called in to investigate when a local pastor is found stabbed to death. As DI Henley assesses the crime scene, she discovers a hidden door that conceals a room set up for torture - and bound to the bed in the middle of the room is the body of a man. When another body is found, also tied down, Henley realises there's someone out there torturing innocent people and leaving them for dead. But why? There's nothing that connects the victims. They didn't know each other. Their paths never crossed. But someone has targeted them, and it's up to Henley and the SCU to stop them before they find another binding room...

Information about 2022 St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend and how to book tickets can be found here.

In The St Hilda's Spotlight - Leye Adenle

 

Name:- Leye Adenle

Job:- Author, business and personal coach who has also appeared on stage in London

Website:- http://leyeadenle.com

Twitter: - @LeyeAdenle

Introduction:-

Leye Adenle comes from a family of writers. His novel Easy Motion Tourist was the winner of the first ever Prix Marianne in 2016. His short story The Assassination (which was published in the anthology Sunshine Noir) was a finalist for the CWA 2016 Short Story Dagger. He is currently writing the fourth book in the Amaka series.

Current book? (This can either be the current book that you are reading or writing)

I’m currently working on the fourth book in my Amaka Thriller Series. The current working title is AMAKA.

Favourite book

The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

Which two characters would you invite to dinner and why? 

Jack Reacher and Lisbeth Salander. Why? I find them both very intriguing and I want to see how they get along. 

How do you relax?

Long walks

Which book do you wish you had written and why? 

The Spy Who Came in from The Cold by John Le Carré I think it’s a perfect thriller. 

What would you say to your younger self if you were just starting out as a writer.

Trust yourself. Have fun. It all works out in the end. You got this. 

How would you describe your latest published book?

Magical. The Beautiful Side of the Moon (Ouida Press 2022) is a speculative fiction thriller in which a Nigerian is called upon to save the world.

With Town and Country: Green Lanes to Mean Streets being the theme at St Hilda's this year, Where is your favourite town and where is your favourite country? Why have you chosen these?

Lagos, Nigeria. It’s the craziest, most fun, most colourful, most accommodating, most unpredictable city I’ve ever lived in. 

What are you looking forward to at St Hilda's?

Friends and readers!

The Beautiful Side of the Moon (Ouida Press 2022)

In which a Nigerian saves the world. Drawing on age-old African story-telling traditions, modern science-fiction and contemporary thriller writing, The Beautiful Side of the Moon conjures up an entirely new way of seeing the world. The central character, Osaterin, thinks he is just a modest IT guy living in Lagos – but it turns out he is much, much more than that…

Information about 2022 St Hilda's College Crime Fiction Weekend and how to book tickets can be found here.