Competition - win a Top Notch thriller

Author Mike Ripley - who's a keen reader of this blog - has made it his own one-man mission to resuscitate, rescue and re-purpose British thriller books that have gone out of print but which deserve their day in the sun again. His Top Notch Thriller imprint has over the last couple of years republished over fifteen books by British thriller writers.

I've just finished a great little story: Cold War, by David Brierley.

It's set in Paris in 1979 and follows the trail of a young, CIA-trained agent Cody, who's now left the CIA and is living in Paris with her lover. She gets caught up in the fever pitch of the election in France when it appears sinister forces are set up to bring down the Government. Though she is trying to escape the spying game, after a former colleague reveals to her secret information before he is killed, she is forced to track down the real story behind a scientist, Jean-Louis Ladouceur.

From being a by-stander at a shooting, Cody becomes the central player in a spy drama that moves from Paris to Berlin and tests her agents skills to the limits.

It's a good read, which I polished off commenting on the train over one week. Always good too to read stories with female espionage heroines, which in 1979 were still a relatively new phenomenon. Author David Brierley was described then as a new name joining the range of the world's great spy fiction writers.

To celebrate Mike's efforts in promoting British thriller writers, I've agreed to run a little competition for Deighton Dossier readers. The prize: a copy of another Top Notch Thriller - Undertow, by Desmond Cory, the story of Johnny Fedora, a half-Spanish, half-Irish assassin contracted to British Intelligence, who's charged with getting to grips with a KGB plot to uncover secrets from a sunk U-Boat in the Mediterranean (shades of Horse Under Water!). This character made his debut in 1951, two years before the arrival of James Bond.

To win this book, please answer this question (and send your answers to me at deightondossier [AT] me [DOT] com):

What is the name of the film about German U-Boats by Wolfgang Petersen from 1981, which starred Jurgen Prochnow?

Competition closes 12 December. No correspondence will be entered into. Judge's decision is final. One winner from the winning answers will be picked at random. Winner will be notified through email.

Good luck, readers!
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We have a winner: Matthew Comstock!

New competition - win a first edition of Mike Ripley's Angels Unaware

Author Mike Ripley - creator of the award-winning crime series starring detective Ray Angel - is known to this blog through his books and his column on crime, spy and thriller writing which he writes on the Shotsmag website, called 'Getting Away with Murder'. As readers will see from the previous blog post, his friend Len Deighton has provided a guest blog on this month's edition of the column.

Someone once described Ripley as a writer who writes 'like a young Len Deighton, wierd and wonderful information and very, very funny'. He's also been described as 'England's funniest crime writer' by The Times and he is also a respected critic of crime fiction, writing for the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times and the Birmingham Post among others.

Ever generous, Mike has donated a signed first edition hardback copy of his latest novel, Angels Unaware. This book follows the adventures of his celebrated character Fitzroy Maclean Angel, who is not your ordinary private detective. In this new comedy crime thriller, the world he inhabits is strange and it is about to get stranger. A new born baby means no more cases, no more fingerprinting and no more espionage and, with the arrival of his aging, hippy mother, he has swapped bloodstains for paint stains. Domesticity, or the lack of it, has replaced his high-paced, crime-solving lifestyle. That is, of course, apart from the AWOL screenwriter whose mother's funeral he must attend.

I've just started reading another copy of this book and it's already proving a great page turner on the train into work each morning, following in the tradition of the Angel series of stories.

For a chance to win this signed copy of the book, answer this (ridiculously easy) question:

On the front cover of this book there is a supportive review quote from author Colin Dexter. For creating which fictional detective is Colin most noted?

Please email your answers through the blog or to me directly by the 4th November 2010. A winner will be picked at random from all the correct answers. This competition is open to international readers of the Deighton Dossier Blog, the numbers of which, judging by the little map on the side of blog, are increasing every week. No correspondence will be entered into concerning this competition
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Update: we have a winner: Bill Creed of the USA. The correct answer was, of course, Inspector Morse. Thanks to all of the readers of this blog who took part.

Notching up the thrill rating

More good new from Mike Ripley, author and contributor of the 'Shot in the Dark' section of the excellent online Shots Magazine, who is also now running Ostara Publishing’s Top Notch Thrillers imprint. This aims to revive Great British thrillers ‘which do not deserve to be forgotten'. Mike's got a knack for picking out long-forgotten titles, giving them a spit and a polish and putting them back on display for a reading public who otherwise would be none the wiser.

The new titles coming include: a 50th anniversary reissue of a classic manhunt, the story of a World War II conspiracy from one of the biggest selling authors of the 1970s, an award-winning against-the-clock thriller and a Gothic chiller from an author described as the literary link between Dennis Wheatley and James Herbert.

Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household is the tense, spare story of a manhunt across England’s green and pleasant countryside in 1955 which has been described by one critic “As if Gunfight at the OK Corral had been transposed to St Mary Mead.”

Geoffrey Household, the writer widely considered to be the natural successor to John Buchan, had an unrivalled feel for the English countryside and the primitive bond between hunter and prey. First published fifty years ago in 1960, Watcher in the Shadows is a masterly description of a deadly game of cat-and-mouse which ranks comfortably alongside Household’s legendary Rogue Male.

Black Camelot, first published in 1978, combines a superbly researched wartime conspiracy plot with blistering action and rightly led to the author, Duncan Kyle, being favourably compared to Alistair Maclean and Desmond Bagley.

Under his real name, John Broxholme was a distinguished journalist and Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, but it was as Duncan Kyle that he achieved international fame from the moment his first thriller, A Cage of Ice, became an instant bestseller on publication in 1970.

Francis Clifford was one of Britain’s most respected thriller writers from his first well-crafted mysteries in the late 1950s to his untimely death in 1975. His 1974 novel The Grosvenor Square Goodbye was a sensation on publication, won the Crime Writers’ Silver Dagger and was serialised in national newspapers.

The action of the book takes place in less than 24 hours and begins with a crazed lone gunman bringing the West End of London – and the American Embassy – to a violent halt. But nothing, absolutely nothing, in this ingenious ticking-clock thriller can be taken for granted.

The Young Man From Lima, first published in 1968, shows all the trademark touches which made author John Blackburn “today’s master of horror” (Times Literary Supplement).

Blackburn held a unique place among British thriller writers of the 1960s, adding his own taste for the Gothic and the macabre to the conventions of the thriller, the spy story and the detective novel, and always at a ferocious pace. As a writer he is seen as the literary link between the work of Dennis Wheatley and James Herbert and many of his plots were based on scientific or medical phenomenon presaging the work of writers such as Michael Crichton.

Boozy lunches and canapés

Had a very interesting evening tonight courtesy of Penguin Books' crime and thriller department. Thanks for the evening go to the author Mike Ripley, editor of the Shots Mag website, who got me the invite. Clearly, the 'blogosphere' is now a target audience.

In between glasses of white wine, the effervescent Ripley told me of his lunch with Len Deighton today in London, during which he got some books signed, caught up on news with Len and spent ages sharing stories about second world war military intelligence.

Sounds like a fun lunch!

More great British thrillers get a new lease of life

Mike Ripley, thriller writer and editor of the excellent Shots online magazine about British thriller, crime and espionage writing, has sent out news of more developments by new imprint Ostara Publishing, which is specialising in putting back out on the market long-forgotten British thrillers with the aim of attracting a new generation of readers.

Ostara is issuing four more titles in their print-on-demand Top Notch Thrillers series. Ripley set up this new company to, he says, "revive Great British thrillers which do not deserve to be forgotten”. The new titles, originally published in Britain between 1962 and 1970, were selected by Ripley, who is the series editor for this new imprint.

The Tale of the Lazy Dog by Alan Williams is a heist thriller set in the Laos-Cambodia-Vietnam triangle in 1969 as a mis-matched gang of rogues and pirates attempt to steal $1.5 billion in used US Treasury notes. Time Is An Ambush is a delicate, atmospheric study of suspicion and guilt set in Franco’s Spain, by Francis Clifford, one of the most-admired stylists of the post-war generation of British thriller-writers. A Flock Of Ships, Brian Callison’s bestselling wartime thriller of a small Allied convoy lured to its doom in the South Atlantic, was famous for its breathless, machine-gun prose and was described by Alistair Maclean as “the best war story I have ever read”. The Ninth Directive was the second assignment for super-spy Quiller (whose fans included Kingsley Amis and John Dickson Carr), created by Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor) and is a taught, tense thriller of political assassination which pre-dated Day of the Jackal by five years.

Of these new reissues, Mike Ripley says: ‘Our new titles are absolutely in line with the Top Notch ethos of showing the range and variety of thrillers from what was something of a Golden Age for British thriller writing. They range in approach from slow-burning suspense to relentless wartime action and feature obsessive, super tough, super cool spies and some tremendous villains. Above all, they are characterised by the quality of their writing, albeit in very different styles.

‘When first published, these titles were all best-sellers and their authors are among the most respected names in thriller fiction. Many readers will welcome these novels back almost as old friends and hopefully a new generation of readers will discover them for the first time.’

As a critic and editor of the Shots website Ripley has shown that he has an eye for understanding what readers are interested in and the potential for injecting new vigour into the British thriller genre by drawing on the lessons of the past. These new books sound pretty cool, and I'm sure readers of this blog would want to check them out.

Looking down the back of the literary sofa...

Friend of this blog and one of the UK's top thriller writers Mike Ripley has a brand new venture out which seeks to resurrect long-lost literary gems from the archives.

Ostara Publishing’s new imprint Top Notch Thrillers aims to revive Great British thrillers which do not deserve to be forgotten. A recent news release informs me that each title has been carefully selected not just for its plot or sense of adventure but for the distinctiveness and sheer quality of its writing. Mike - author of the award-winning ‘Angel’ comic thrillers and former crime fiction critic of the Daily Telegraph - will be the series editor. He currently writes the Getting Away With Murder column for the e-zine Shots which is linked to on this blog.

Says Ripley, of this new venture: “There is a staggering variety of style and breadth of imagination in British thriller writing which is in danger of slipping from popular memory. I think of the Sixties and Seventies as a Golden Age for British thrillers, much as the 1930s were for the detective story. The big names are still remembered, if only just – writers such as Alistair Maclean, Len Deighton and Gavin Lyall – but many are unjustly forgotten. It is a labour of love for me to bring back some of the favourite titles of my youth and put them before a new generation of readers before it’s too late.”

The first four Top Notch Thrillers, published this month, are Snake Water by Alan Williams, The Terrible Door by George Sims, Night of Glass by Philip Purser and A Clear Road to Archangel by Geoffrey Rose. Eight more titles are expected in 2010.

The origins of a fascination with espionage, perhaps?

I offer my thanks to crime and thriller writer Mike Ripley, who's shared with me an interview he completed with Len Deighton at the end of last year which has just appeared in the CADS newsletter. One interesting answer Deighton gives to Mike points us in the direction of his early interest in spy fiction, and corroborates the fact that I'd seen this mentioned somewhere a while back, but could get no confirmation of it.

Deighton, as a child, lives in Gloucester Place Mews, Marylebone: "One night, I leaned from the window to see our next door neighbour Mrs Wolkoff being arrested. My mother worked for her as a cook and saw the VIPs she had as dinner guests. Dear old Anna was an important spy working for the Germans. After a trial at the Old Bailey she went to prison. For reasons we must not probe into, the Special Branch falsified the records to say she was arrested in South Kensington. That commotion in the small hours of the morning stayed in my memory."