Forthcoming Books from Atlantic Books

 January 2025

The Killing Sense is by Sam Blake. Danger is closer than you think... Single Mum Kate Wilde has escaped an abusive marriage and hasn't had a holiday in years, so when she wins a five-day trip to Paris to learn about perfume - in a competition she can't remember entering - it's a dream come true. Or is it? Almost as soon as she arrives, Kate's ex texts with evidence that he's in Paris too. Kate can feel she's being watched, and she's sure someone has been in her apartment. Then she discovers that there's a killer in the city focusing on red headed women like her. And his kill count is rising. Who should she fear the most? All Kate's senses are on alert. But can her instincts keep her safe?

Professional medium turned detective Claire, her best friend Sophie (a 17-year-old ghost) and their pals are enjoying a much-needed cheap holiday in an unfinished hotel on Spike Island off the coast of Ireland. Claire is flattered to be asked by the local ghost of a pirate captain to investigate the theft of treasure from the shipwreck that stranded him there several hundred years ago. But just when she thinks she is closing in on the culprit, a murder takes place, and Claire and her friends quickly become the chief suspects. Can they recover the treasure, solve the murder and clear their names before all is lost? Displeasure Island is by Alice Bell.

February 2025

The Glass House is by Rachel Donohue. The window to the past can never be closed... 1963: At the stark and isolated modernist mansion of controversial political philosopher Richard Acklehurst, the glittering annual New Year's Eve party has not gone quite as planned. Considered a genius by some, and something far darker by others, by the end of the evening Acklehurst will be dead in mysterious circumstances, casting a long shadow over the lives of his teenage daughters, Aisling and Stella. 1999: Richard Acklehurst's remains are defiled in the country graveyard where they have lain undisturbed for over thirty years, forcing his daughters to return to their childhood home where they must finally confront the complex and dark dynamic at the heart of their family. Moving from the West of Ireland to Dublin, London, Florence and back, The Glass House is a captivating and compelling tale of two sisters and their secrets, of love, regret and vengeance.

April 2025

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is by Ron Currie. Sometimes your ancestors breathe through you. Sometimes, they call for vengeance... Babs Dionne, doting grandmother and vicious crime matriarch, rules her small town with an iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into its borders with the help of her loyal lieutenants, girlfriends since they were teenagers, and her eldest daughter, Lori, a former soldier struggling with addiction. When a drug cartel discovers that its numbers are down in the area, they send a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate. At the same time, Babs's youngest daughter, Sis, has gone missing, which doesn't seem at all like a coincidence. In twenty-four hours, Sis will be found dead, and the whole town will seek shelter from Babs's wrath...

May 2025

1950. A file lands on Chief Inspector Troy’s desk, indicating that his boss has been conducting an affair with the known mistress of infamous London racketeer Otto Ohnherz. Troy is immediately intrigued by the mysterious origins of Ohnherz’s second-in- command, Jay Feldman, who claims to have survived the concentration camps yet lacks identification beyond his word. So begins a novel of swapped identities in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, each chapter adding a new layer of intrigue. Curse God and Die is by John Lawton.

The making of Joe Wilderness IV : Moscow Exile

 

Photo ©Nick Lockett

How do you invent a character? I’ve no idea. Perhaps boredom plays its part. In 1983 I was tending orange groves in Spain, so far south that the Rock of Gibraltar loomed up outside my bedroom window like an unfinished skyscraper and Morocco’s Atlas Range looked like a wallpaper freeze.

Oranges do not ask a lot of you. Their small talk is microscopic. The highlight of the day would be when the locals, other farmers, passed by to marvel at the sheer whiteness of a kid from the north of England. The day might have livened up if they’d asked what I was doing there, but no one ever did. So … Troy was born out of boredom. I told myself stories to stave off the noonday devil and at dusk I wrote them in the sky on the tips of the Atlas mountains. 

Troy began as an honest copper, in the vein of Roderick Alleyn or Charlie Luke. Soon got fed up with that and over the course of my first novel he evolved into something far more complex — a lethal, deceitful philandering bastard. A few books into the series a CNN reviewer said to me, “I used to wonder why Troy got the shit kicked out of him in each book. It’s because he deserves it.” Correct. Then he said, “Wouldn’t you just love to write about someone who was … well … decent?”

Thus was Joe Wilderness born. He’s the hero of my latest novel —Moscow Exile — and of three earlier books. Unlike Troy he’s very English, working class (from Whitechapel in the East End of London) and he’s honest. He would never cheat on his wife or kick the cat. He believes in trust. Betrayal of trust would never occur to him. That said, he’s also a burglar, smuggler, MI6 agent and con-artist. Still … an honest man.

The centre of Wilderness’s world has never been London. Berlin, East and West, is his personal magnet. In part this location is down to my father’s all-too-brief narrative of his time in Germany in 1945 — his war ended in the British Sector of Berlin — and Joe’s good or bad fortune is down to two of my university tutors in the 1960s, Peter Frank and David Lane, both Russianists who’d been drafted just after WW2 and given a stark choice. Cue the voice of the late William Hartnell, “Right, you ’orrible lot. You can spend two years square-bashing or you can bugger off to Cambridge and learn Russian.”

They chose Cambridge, became fluent in Russian and in their modest way became spies. I gave Joe Wilderness the same choice. And after Cambridge, Hamburg and after Hamburg … Berlin. And after Berlin … Moscow.

I left Joe at the end of Hammer to Fall with a bullet in his back, flat on his face, on the Glienicker Brücke, where West Berlin met East Germany. The bridge was deeply fictionalised as The Bridge of Spies by Steven Spielberg … I say ‘fictionalised, as I’ve never seen a photograph in which the bridge resembled the one he filmed. As the book ends Joe is hauled away by the KGB to whatever fate awaits him. Finis … been there … done that … bought the T-shirt.

However … ya gets asked fer sequels.

And ya cain’t say … ‘Fuuuuuuuck off!’

So … Moscow Exile. The life and misadventures of Joe Wilderness in Moscow, exile … prisoner … defector? To say more would be a spoiler.

But … how to get there? That wasn’t obvious and the oddest idea occurred to me … a prequel-sequel, a book in which much of the outcome is already anticipated and the narrative task is to get back to that point. This might be called ‘backstory’ — a phrase I had never heard until the great Robert B. used it as a title — more properly termed prolepsis.

Risky … but from the standpoint of the writer … er … appropriately challenging. No risk, no fun. So once the prelims were over I rolled the plot back thirty years to London and then to Washington, aiming all the time for Moscow in 1969.

I based the prequel, very loosely, on the life of Pamela Harriman, daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill, who later married the former US ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, and became, quite possibly, the queen of Washington society, renowned for her celebrity-packed dinner parties, and for the little Asprey’s silver notebook in which she recorded the gossip of the DC elite.

It’s a long time before ‘Coky’ (that’s what I named her) meets Joe Wilderness.

And before I could type the words ‘The End’ (so pleasing to the eye) Joe is back at the bridge in the heartland of the mid-century spy — Berlin — Moscow still a memory so fresh as to sting, still in pursuit of the pot of gold at the end of the spook’s rainbow.

Moscow Exile by John Lawton Published by Atlantic Grove (Out Now)

Charlotte is a British expatriate who has recently settled in Washington, D.C. with her second husband, but enviable dinner parties aren’t the only thing she is planning. Meanwhile, Charlie Leigh-Hunt has been posted to Washington as a replacement for Guy Burgess, last seen disappearing around the corner and into the Soviet Union. Charlie is surprised to cross paths with Charlotte, an old flame of his, who, thanks to her gossipy parties, has a packed pocketbook full of secrets she is eager to share. 

Two decades later, in 1969, Joe Wilderness is stuck on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, held captive by the KGB, a chip in a game way above his pay grade – but his old friends Frank and Eddie are going to try to spring him out of the toughest prison in the world. All roads lead back to Berlin, and to the famous Bridge of Spies…

John Lawton has written three previous novels starring Joe Wilderness - Then We Take Berlin (2013), The Unfortunate Englishman (2016), and Hammer to Fall (2020). He has also written eight Inspector Troy thrillers -, Black Out (1995), Old Flames (1996), A Little White Death (1998), Riptide (aka Bluffing Mr Churchill) (2001), Flesh Wounds (aka Blue Rondo) (2005), Second Violin (2007), A Lily of the Field (2010), Friends and Traitors (2017). One standalone book – Sweet Sunday (2002) and a number of other books.  

Forthcoming Crime Books From Atlantic Books

 February 2023

Bright and Deadly Things is by Lexie Elliott. A retreat doesn't always mean safety... Following the death of her husband, Emily is happy to find herself surrounded by friends and fellow Oxford peers at the rustic Chalet des Anglais in the French Alps. With no electricity, running water, or access by car, surely this trip will offer her the time and space she needs to heal. But before she makes it to the airport, Emily interrupts a break-in at her home, and on the first night at the chalet, she discovers an inappropriate sexual liaison between an undergrad and a colleague. When the student suddenly disappears, and Emily sees her deceased husband's number in her call history, she realizes she had better figure out who she can trust - or the next disappearance may be her own...

March 2023

The Bandit Queens is by Parini Shroff. For Geeta, life as a widow is more peaceful than life as a wife... Until the other women in her village decide they want to be widows, too. Geeta is believed to have killed her vanished husband - a rumour she hasn't bothered trying to correct, because a reputation like that can keep a single woman safe in rural India. But when she's approached for help in ridding another wife of her abusive drunk of a husband, her reluctant agreement sets in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of all the women in the village....

April 2023

Cleeve is not for everyone... When Eve's husband is appointed housemaster at his old boarding school, Cleeve College, she gives up her life in London to join him. But the isolation and loss of autonomy threaten both her happiness and her marriage. The arrival of Fen, an enigmatic artist and wife of the new Classics teacher, is a welcome distraction. Fen doesn't play by the rules, and she and Eve enter into a game of escalating dares, disrupting the delicate balance of school life. Then, the morning after Hazard Night, a tradition that allows the students to run wild and play pranks for one day, a body is found. Someone has been murdered. And it seems everyone has something to hide... Hazard Night is by Laura Vaughan.

The Sinner's Mark is by S.W. Perry. Treason, heresy and revolt in Queen Elizabeth's England . . . The year is 1600. With a dying queen on the throne, war raging on the high seas and famine on the rise, England is on the brink of chaos. And in London's dark alleyways, a conspiracy is brewing. In the court's desperate bid to silence it, an innocent man is found guilty - the father of Nicholas Shelby, physician and spy. As Nicholas races against time to save his father, he and his wife Bianca are drawn into the centre of a treacherous plot against the queen. When one of Shakespeare's boy actors goes missing, and Bianca discovers a disturbing painting that could be a clue, she embarks on her own investigation. Meanwhile, as Nicholas comes closer to unveiling the real conspirator, the men who wish to silence him are multiplying. When he stumbles on a plan to overthrow the state and replace it with a terrifying new order, he may be forced to make a decision between his country and his heart . . 

May 2023

Claire and Sophie aren't your typical murder investigators . . . Claire Hendricks is a hapless 30-something true crime fan working as a freelance medium. When she is Invited to an old university friend's country pile to provide entertainment for a family party, her best friend Sophie tags along. In fact, Sophie rarely leaves Claire's side, because she's been haunting her ever since she was murdered at the age of 17. When the pair arrive at The Cloisters it's clear this family is hiding more than just the good china, as Claire realizes someone has recently met an untimely end at the house. Teaming up with the least unbearable members of the Wellington-Forge family - depressive ex-cop Basher and teenage reactionary Alex - Claire and Sophie determine to figure out not just whodunnit, but who they killed, why and when. Together they must race against incompetence to find the murderer before the murderer finds them, in this funny, modern, media-literate mystery for the My Favourite Murder generation. Grave Expectations is by Alice Bell. 

Charlotte is a British expatriate who has recently settled in Washington, D.C. with her second husband, but enviable dinner parties aren't the only thing she is planning. Meanwhile, Charlie Leigh-Hunt has been posted to Washington as a replacement for Guy Burgess, last seen disappearing around the corner and into the Soviet Union. Charlie is surprised to cross paths with Charlotte, an old flame of his, who, thanks to her gossipy parties, has a packed pocketbook full of secrets she is eager to share. Two decades later, in 1969, Joe Wilderness is stuck on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, held captive by the KGB, a chip in a game way above his pay grade - but his old friends Frank and Eddie are going to try to spring him out of the toughest prison in the world. All roads lead back to Berlin, and to the famous Bridge of Spies... Featuring crackling dialogue and brilliantly plotted Cold War intrigue, Moscow Exile is by John Lawton and is a gripping thriller populated by larger-than-life personalities in a Cold War plot that feels strangely in tune with our present.

June 2023

Killingly by Katharine Beutner is based on the unsolved real-life disappearance of a university student in 1897The young women at Mount Holyoke are famed for their beauty and goodness - except for Agnes and Bertha. With their strange dresses, love of studying and insular friendship, these two students are peculiar. One autumn morning, Bertha is spotted in the woods. Then, she vanishes, leaving Agnes to wander the cold university halls alone. When an infamous detective is hired to investigate Bertha's case, alongside the local doctor, both men become strangely obsessed with finding the missing girl. As Bertha's secrets start to come to light, so do the competing agendas driving each person who is searching for her. Bertha might be gone, but she left clues behind her. Clues which might put her best friend in mortal danger and shatter the peaceful world of Mount Holyoke forever . . . Where did Bertha go? Who would want to hurt her? And could she still be alive?

CrimeFest 2022 Programme

 

Thursday 12 May 2022

13:30 - 14:20

PARTNERS IN CRIME: CRIME-SOLVING DUOS

Thomas Enger

Stuart Field

Michael Kurland

Russ Thomas

Participating Moderator: Sam Holland

14:40 - 15:30

Panel 1

ALL IN THE PAST: THE ENDURING FASCINATION WITH HISTORICAL CRIME FICTION

Kate Ellis

Mark Ellis

Carolyn Kirby

Leigh Russell

Participating Moderator: Linda Stratmann

Panel 2

BUBBLING UNDER: CREATING TENSION

Brian Price

Leslie Scase

Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Cath Staincliffe

Participating Moderator: Samantha Lee Howe

15:50 - 16:40

Panel 1

TICKING CLOCKS: IS CRIME FICTION A RACE AGAINST TIME?

Steve Cavanagh

Jørn Lier Horst

Tina Orr Munro

Trevor Wood

Participating Moderator: L.F. Robertson

Panel 2

A CHANGE IS AS GOOD AS A REST: WRITING MORE THAN ONE SERIES

M.J. Lee

Douglas Lindsay

Michael Stanley (Stan Trollip)

Robert Wilson

Participating Moderator: Michael Ridpath

17:00 - 17:50

Panel 1

AUTHORS REMEMBERED

Maxim Jakubowski (on Cornell Woolrich)

John Lawton (on Jerzy Kosinsky)

Nick Triplow (on Ted Lewis)

TBC

Participating moderator: Mike Ripley

Panel 2

YOU’RE HAVING A LAUGH: HUMOUR IN CRIME FICTION

Helen Fitzgerald

Dolores Gordon-Smith

Amita Murray

Antti Tuomainen 

Participating Moderator: Nev Fountain

20:00 – 21:30: CRIMEFEST Pub Quiz, with crime writer and critic Peter Guttridge as your quiz inquisitor. Prizes to be won!

LOCATION: TBA.

Friday 13 May 2022

09:00 - 09:50

Panel 1

40 YEARS OF CHANGE: FROM THE DEPRESSED 30s TO THE SWINGING 60s

Tim Glister

Michael Kurland

John Lawton

Niki Mackay

Participating Moderator: Luke McCallin

Panel 2

STICKING TO THE LAW: POLICE PROCEDURALS

Rachael Blok

Stuart Field

Leigh Russell

G.D. Sanders

Participating Moderator: Paul Gitsham

10:10 - 11:00

Panel 1

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: NOT SO PERFECT LIVES

Tina Baker

L.F. Robertson

Amanda Robson

Catriona Ward

Participating Moderator: Caroline England

Panel 2

SUSPECT EVERYONE: TIGHT KNIT COMMUNITIES, SMALL TOWNS AND LOCKED ROOMS

Rachael Blok

James Delargy

Victoria Dowd

David Hewson

Participating Moderator: Martin Edwards

Panel 3

OUT OF UNIFORM: GIFTED AMATEURS

Elizabeth Mundy

Nell Pattison

Fiona Veitch Smith

Trevor Wood

Participating Moderator: Carolyn Kirby

11:20 – 12:10

Panel 1

THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Simon Conway

Fiona Erskine

Antony Johnston

Eve Smith

Participating Moderator: Christine Poulson

Panel 2

CROOKED PATHS: PLOTS THAT TWIST AND TURN

Simon Brett

Sam Carrington

Michael Ridpath

Simon Toyne

Participating Moderator: Katerina Diamond

Panel 3

A STRANGE BUSINESS? PRIVATE EYES AND PAID SLEUTHS

Mick Finlay

Felix Francis

Cath Staincliffe

Lesley Thomson

Participating Moderator: Cathy Ace

12:30 - 13:20

Panel 1

DIVIDED SOCIETY: HATE CRIMES AND SOCIAL FACTORS

Kia Abdullah

Antony Dunford

Sarah Sultoon

Holly Watt

Participating Moderator: Michael Stanley (Stanley Trollip)

Panel 2

BURYING SECRETS: WHO KNOWS WHAT, WHEN, AND WHY?

Mason Cross

Stephen Edger

Gilly MacMillan

Russ Thomas

Participating Moderator: Emily Koch

Panel 3

NETFLIX’ THE STAIRCASE: PLEADING GUILTY TO A CRIME YOU DIDN'T COMMIT?

Steve Cavanagh (Defence)

Imran Mahmood (Prosecution)

Ayo Onatade (The Judge)

13:40 - 14:30

Panel 1

CRIME IN THE CITY: LONDON SET CRIME FICTION

Elle Croft

Biba Pearce

Jeff Dowson

Victoria Selman

Participating Moderator: Linda Mather

Panel 2

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO?: CHARACTERS AT THE EDGE

Andrew Child

Katerina Diamond

Robert Goddard

Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Participating Moderator: Alex North

Panel 3

LIFE IN THE SHADOWS: SPIES ASSASSINS & COVERT OPERATORS

Antony Johnston

Samantha Lee Howe

Neil Lancaster

Robert Wilson

Participating Moderator: Alex Shaw

14:50 - 15:40

Panel 1

SLEUTHS ABROAD: CRIME IN FOREIGN CLIMES

Peter Hanington

David Hewson

Vaseem Khan

Louise Mangos

Participating Moderator: Barry Forshaw

Panel 2

TRUTH AND REALITY: RESEARCH AND SOURCES

Sue Lawrence

Imran Mahmood

Linda Stratmann

Catriona Ward

Participating Moderator: Janet Laurence

Panel 3

TOXIC: WHEN RELATIONSHIPS TURN BAD

Claire Douglas

Nina Manning

Robin Morgan-Bentley

Rebecca Thornton

Participating Moderator: Amanda Robson

16:00 - 16:50

Panel 1

Ghost of Honour: DICK FRANCIS

Felix Francis

Andrew Hewson

Participating Interviewer: Simon Brett

Panel 2

ITW: THRILLING FOR A LIVING

Alison Bruce

Dugald Bruce-Lockhart

Alex Shaw

Michael Stanley

Participating Moderator: Zoë Sharp

Panel 3

VIOLENCE & GORE: SWEET OLD LADIES & SERIAL KILLERS

Vicki Bradley

Thomas Enger

Nadine Matheson

Alan McDermott

Participating Moderator: Victoria Selman

17:10 – 18:00

Panel 1

PLAYING GAMES: WHEN SOMEONE IS TORMENTING YOUR CHARACTERS

Neil Daws

Chris Ewan

Janice Hallett

Scott Kershaw

Participating Moderator: Jane Shemilt

Panel 2

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: IN REMEMBRANCE OF MARCEL BERLINS

Barry Forshaw

Maxim Jakubowski

Mike Ripley

Karen Robinson

Participating Moderator: Peter Guttridge

18:30 – 19:30
PALM COURT

CrimeFest hosts the CWA’s Dagger Announcement Reception

The rest of the weekend's programme can be found here.

John Lawton on What Sparked The Storyline

In which I persuade John Lawton to reveal what was the idea that sparked the storyline.

Ayo — that’s a difficult question but only a literary gonif would refuse to attempt an answer.

I have always known where my Troy character came from.

Firstly a job tending an orange grove in Spain about forty years ago — there were not many English language books around, but one of them was Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park (1981). Still unbeatable, my favourite detective story bar none. It led to a rush of Russia-set thrillers … but I wasn’t tempted. I needed an elliptical relationship to Gorky Park not a slavishly literal one.

Secondly, seeking to avoid an Eng Lit degree that might have left me drowning in Jane Austen. Marooned in a BBC costume drama, the like of which I cannot watch — ‘La, Mr D’Oily, the foxhound just farted’ — I signed up for the only undergraduate course in the UK in ‘American Literature’. Tennessee, Twain, Vonnegut, Vidal … Myra Breckinridge not Emma Woodhouse! … alas this was the sixties — the home decade of ‘bad’ behaviour. I got slung out. ‘Slung out’ is posh for rusticated.

John Lawton circa 1968

By the time I had worked my psych ticket (Thank you, Corporal Klinger) all the courses had changed and rather than revert to the drawing room and the farting hounds I opted for pre-Soviet Russian Lit, with a year’s Russian language thrown in for good measure. And I emerged steeped in axe-wielding Russian maniacs sometime in the seventies. I’m not wholly sure what the seventies were — I was looking the other way when they happened.

Out of this unholy combination — Russia X 2 — came Frederick Troy.

Joe Wilderness. 

Oh hell.

I am not a Londoner. I’m not even a southerner. London was a place I passed though without stopping. But, ’round about 1980 I was teaching in a London University college — ‘Othello and the Incredible Hulk’ and ‘Robert Browning at the Hotel California’ being my most notable lectures. You may imagine I did not last long … but I lived in Stepney. In 1980 Stepney was old London, ungentrified. The Indian settling of Brick Lane was under way, but the presence and influence of the previous wave of immigrants could still be felt — the Jews. I found the East End, the descendants of the pogrommed refugees, fascinating. I could walk into my local pub and overhear conversations in Yiddish. Also, the presence of the East End’s most notorious villains could still be felt. The Krays had been in prison about ten years at this point.

Sooner or later a Stepney kid was going to surface as the central character in a novel. That became Joe Wilderness — of no particular ethnicity, but born to a family of thieves, rogues and hookers. I housed him in what is probably the East End’s most famous street, Sidney Street, where a young(ish) Winston Churchill personally supervised an armed raid on a bunch of Russian anarchists circa 1910, and where Peter the Painter met his end, or not … depending in which version you believe.

The plot matter was ‘how to get Joe out of Sidney Street?’

I could not leave him there. I had no wish to write an East End gangster novel — quite enough of those around as it is.

Russia came to my aid once more.

Sgt.Maj Loudbutthick: “Right, you useless fuckers! You can spend the next six months square-bashin’ or you can go to Cambridge and learn Russian! Nah, wossit gonna be?”

Some choice … so they both became ‘spies’ … monitoring Russian broadcasting and communiqués.

That was Joe’s route out of the East End, my storyline — or perhaps that should be plural — a highly intelligent Cockney drafted into the RAF (the only branch of UK Armed Forces that had an IQ test for draftees), who becomes fluent in Russian, a valuable asset to MI6 … but … but inside he remains the East End rogue of his youth …. a thoroughly likeable, deeply dishonest spook who cannot get by without ‘something on the side.’

Two of my tutors in Russian Government, being too young for WW2 had been drafted into the RAF about the time of the Korean War.

My first Wilderness novel, Then We Take Berlin, sees him as a smuggler of coffee, as valuable a commodity as cigarettes in the late 1940s, from West Berlin to East Berlin. But, as a reviewer helpfully pointed out (I had not noticed) Joe never really profits, money runs though his fingers like grains of sand.

In the second, The Unfortunate Englishman, it is truckload of vintage Claret.

And in my current novel, Hammer to Fall, illegally-distilled Finnish vodka, which he smuggles into a thirsty Soviet Union, via a ‘hole-in-the-fence’ in Murmansk.

Every time I write a novel, it is an end in itself. Reviewers said of Then We Take Berlin ‘weird ending. He must be planning a sequel.’ I wasn’t. That really was where Wilderness ended.

Then, the home team … agents, publishers, girlfriends, say … ‘Well would it kill you to write a sequel?’

So, I do.

And The Unfortunate Englishman was also the last of Wilderness. One of the few happy endings I have ever written. (‘Happiness is for losers.’ F. Nietzsche 1897).

Cue home team. Repeat the process. Offer me money.

And … I was not at all sure I could write a third Wilderness. Could he not just stay happy in Hampstead with his wife and daughters?


No, he bloody well couldn’t.

What changed?

For one thing I had started isolating myself to write at the bottom of a deep valley in Southern Tuscany — a fourteenth century watermill, surrounded in mist, bollock-freezing cold and beautiful.

One of the neighbours — well, not that isolated after all — is the Finnish musician Anna-Riikka Santapukki. So, I learnt something of Finland just in the course of conversation, and pursued it in research, in particular its struggle to stay neutral during the Cold War and its thousand-mile, heavily-defended frontier with the USSR — not a country anyone would choose as a neighbour. And I learnt that in an effort to remain neutral it had, sometime in the early sixties, both kicked out the CIA and denied Russia use of military bases. This country, population under five million, had balls, and in the absence of the CIA I saw a role and a plot for Joe Wilderness. And, of course, Finland distils hooch in greater quantities than the backwoods of Kentucky. ’Nuff said.

I could not and did not leave Joe in Finland. The needs of plot called for more action … and a the next ‘big thing’ in the Cold War loomed ominous and obvious — the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.

Any more would be what I believe is termed a ‘spoiler.’ 

Hammer To Fall by John Lawton (Published by Grove Press)
It's London, the swinging sixties, and by rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, in the wake of an embarrassing disaster for MI6, Wilderness has been posted to remote northern Finland in a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad. Bored by his work, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness finds another way to make money: smuggling vodka across the border into the USSR. He strikes a deal with old KGB pal Kostya, who explains to him there is a vodka shortage in the Soviet Union - but there is something fishy about Kostya's sudden appearance in Finland and intelligence from London points to a connection to cobalt mining in the region, a critical component in the casing of an atomic bomb. Wilderness's posting is getting more interesting by the minute, but more dangerous too. Moving from the no-man's-land of Cold War Finland to the wild days of the Prague Spring, and populated by old friends (including Inspector Troy) and old enemies alike, Hammer to Fall is a gripping tale of deception and skulduggery, of art and politics, a page-turning story of the always riveting life of the British spy.