Cover reveal: Dead Drop

My next book, Dead Drop, is non-fiction, an investigation into one of the most remarkable espionage operations of the Cold War: the running of Colonel Oleg Penkovsky by MI6 and the CIA in the early Sixties, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Simon & Schuster will publish it in the UK in June, and here's the fantastic cover for it! I'll add more information about it to this site and a revamped website in the coming weeks.

Logo A-go-go

The Debrief now has a logo! It was designed by David Foster of Permission To Kill, a great fun blog dedicated to spy novels, films and TV shows that I've spent many an hour perusing. David mentioned this blog recently, and in the process created the above image, inspired by Jon Gray's design for Penguin's forthcoming paperback edition of Free Agent in the US. I asked him if I could use it, and he kindly said I could. Very swish, don't you think?

Come on in, the war's cold

Hello, and a very warm welcome to The Debrief. This is a companion to my official site, and I plan to use it in a different way. It won't be a traditional blog, but more of a repository for pieces of journalism and research lurking on my hard drive (a few of which are far from brief, so the name seems doubly appropriate), as well as occasional notes and behind-the-scenes info on my spy novels. That's the idea, anyway - it may well change as I go along. I'll probably also link to items here via Facebook and Twitter.