Blog Archives

The darkest secret of the U.S. Presidency is about to be revealed.

Beecher White, a young archivist for the US government, has always been the keeper of other people’s stories, never a part of the story himself . . . Until now.

While Beecher is showing Clementine Kaye, his first childhood crush, around the National Archives, they accidentally uncover a priceless artefact – a two-hundred-year-old dictionary once belonging to George Washington. Suddenly Beecher and Clementine are entangled in a web of conspiracy and murder.

Beecher’s race to learn the truth behind this mysterious treasure will lead to a code that conceals a disturbing secret from the nation’s founding. A secret that some believe is worth killing for.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always had a fascination with the United States, the history and her Presidency and when the paperback edition of Brad Meltzer’s The Inner Circle landed on my desk a few days ago I jumped at the chance to pay a visit not only to the West Wing – minus Josiah Bartlet unfortunately – but the National Archives. Try as I might I couldn’t get Nicholas Cage’s National Treasure and the multiple copies of the Declaration of Independence out of my head, and that was before I began reading!

The Inner Circle combines betrayal, the presidency, murder and a deep rooted conspiracy to deliver a complex and compelling political thriller, an intriguing thriller that will keep you guessing until the final pages. Meltzer  takes you one way and then another, all the while constantly introducing more than enough red herrings to confuse matters, and then, just when you think you have it all figured out, he switches things around and no one – nothing – is who they first appear to be.

Although the narrative is …

Anyone’s life can change in an instant. In Matthew F. Jones’s acclaimed novel, one man’s world is overturned with a single shot.

Trespassing on what was once his family’s land, John Moon hears a rustle in the brush and fires. But instead of the deer he was expecting, he finds the body of a young woman, killed by his stray bullet. A terrible dilemma is made worse when he stumbles upon her campground – and the piles of drugs and money concealed there.

Moon makes his choice: he hides the corpse, and takes the cash. His decision will have consequences he can neither predict or control.

Originally published in 1996, A Single Shot by author Matthew F Jones is proof, if ever it was required, that Mulholland Books are on the right track. Still in its infancy, the publisher – part of the Hodder & Stoughton stable in the UK – continues its fine publication record with another intriguing and dark title.

Billed as a classic Noir novel, A Single Shot is one of those titles you find yourself asking one simple question throughout – what would I do?. Set over a period of one week the premise for A Single Shot is simple; a man named John Moon is out hunting – illegally I may add – and finding a deer in his sights releases the safety catch on his shotgun and takes his shot. He wounds the animal and as he approaches his kill discovers the deer has escaped leaving a bloodied trail and so begins a week of decisions that will, one way or another, have a lasting effect on a number of people. Moon decides to track the deer rather than leave it to die an agonising death – quite a noble decision – but …

May 1, 1969. Blackmailed into serving Moscow, double agent Paul Dark now finds himself a target for both exposure, and assassination. Desperate to escape his predicament, Dark gambles everything on one last throw of the dice, exposing his Soviet handler to the British. But before long, he finds he has no choice but to go on the run again, and the race is on to stop a deadly conspiracy that dates back to the early years of the Cold War. The second part of the Paul Dark trilogy, Song of Treason is another sweat-soaked Sixties-set spy thriller in the tradition of Len Deighton and Frederick Forsyth.

One of the great things about reviewing books – I’ve discovered over the past year - is that it invariably allows me to read or discover authors I have never read or genres I’d never considered reading. Song of Treason by Jeremy Duns falls into the former category and it was purely by mistake that I’d noticed it on my ever growing pile of books to be read! When the book arrived from Simon & Schuster a while back, I remember making a mental note that the cover and new title had impressed me. Originally released in hardback in the UK last year under the title Free Country the publishers decided to change the title and artwork as Jeremy explains on his blog:

This is an unusual occurrence in the world of publishing, but it occasionally happens. The reason for it in this case is pretty simple: my publisher felt there was a danger that Free Country might not signal to those who hadn’t read the first book in the series, Free Agent, that it was a spy thriller. I agreed, and tried to come up with a new title that would stand out

…