The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
I write two strands of fiction in parallel: historical novels, usually concerning espionage in the 20th century, and modern-day crime novels set in Iceland. Usually, I enjoy keeping these two strands separate, but every now and then I cannot resist the urge to let...
Michael Ridpath on Munich 1938, Neville Chamberlain and Historical Fiction | RSS.com Michael Ridpath on Communist spies in the 1930s, Icelandic Murder Mysteries and Financial Crime | RSS.com
Traitor's Gate was your first foray into historical fiction, and you picked the eve of the Second World War and Nazi Germany. Why was that? After writing eight financial thrillers, I decided I wanted to do something new. A spy thriller intrigued me. I was...
Its every young person’s dream -- to find out that one of your relations has a secret but fascinating past, and that they want to take you on a road trip through Europe to reveal all. This is the premise of The Diplomat's Wife, and the journey is every bit as exciting...
What prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first historical novel in? I set my first novel, Traitor’s Gate, in 1938, just before the Second World War. The Second World War was an epic struggle of good against evil, when the stakes were as high as...
Nuclear Near Misses A couple of years ago I spotted an interesting tweet from Tim Harford, pointing me to an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that told the extraordinary story of a group of missilemen on Okinawa who were ordered to launch their...
How do you write a thriller when everyone knows the ending? This was the question that dogged me over the five years of writing my latest thriller, Traitor’s Gate. It’s a reasonable question. However interesting the plot, however fascinating the characters, a...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon Articles Click on the links below to read the full article [dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
