Books >

Free Agent

I always loved spy stories as a boy - I never got into the Famous Five, but devoured the Secret Seven. In my twenties I rediscovered the genre because I was living in Brussels, and for some reason the second-hand bookshops of that city are stuffed with paperbacks of English-language spy thrillers. I read tons of them and became fascinated by the era of the Cold War. Slowly, I started to wonder what I would do if I were to try my hand at writing a spy novel - where would I set it, when, what sort of style, and so on. Musings became research, became writing, became rewriting - and eventually I had a book.