Having spent his working life in the Intelligence Service delving into the secret lives of other people, Alex Maitland finds a certain irony in the fact that historian Michael Standing seems to have unearthed something hidden in Alex’s own. Bad enough that a family member appears to have been guilty of old, unspeakable crimes; worse is that when Standing is murdered, Alex himself falls under suspicion. Following what scanty clues Michael Standing left behind, it soon becomes clear that Alex is not the only one interested in the Maitland family’s past and that this past — even his own — is not what Alex had always supposed. As he uncovers a story of betrayal and revenge Alex Maitland finds that Standing’s death is only the first.

A WEAPON OF THE BOURGEOISIE

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Oldman, David J.

Thrillers & Suspense

Independently published

London, 1946.The war may be over, but it's devastating effects are not...Captain Harry Tennant returning home to a shattered London from serving in Italy and North Africa, expects to be demobbed, only to find his services are still in demand.A policeman before the war, he's made part of the Intelligence Corps, investigating war crimes, those smaller cases of army personnel who are the victims, or the perpetrators, of crimes. That's how Rose Kearney's letter ends up on his desk.Her brother William, a soldier with the Hampshire Regiment, was reported missing in action in Normandy. Having heard nothing since, she's travelling from their home in Wicklow to find answers.Harry learns Kearney was part of a four-man carrier crew fighting near Caen. The burned-out vehicle was found near a French chateau, with two charred corpses and a third who appears to have been executed.But there is no sign of William Kearney.Reports of Nazi atrocities nearby suggest the men were victims of the ruthless Nazi machine. But things aren't adding up for Tennant. Why was Kearney's body never found, and why was an SS officer discovered with the missing man's ID disks? Harry's superior, Jekyll, wants the death blamed on the SS and the case quickly wrapped up. But the more Harry digs, the more curious he becomes. Yet finding answers only seems to raise more questions.And it's not long before Tennant find himself in grave danger...

The Unquiet Grave

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

It is the summer of 1947 and Harry Tennant is back in Berlin. A British Intelligence Officer has died in a fall and SIS has asked Harry to step in to liaise with a German Socialist Party member who has been passing information. That's fine with Harry. He is pleased to be working again, even in a city as devastated as Berlin. He has only two small concerns: just why have SIS chosen him, and was the fall that killed his predecessor really an accident? But espionage is an unhurried business. While waiting for his socialist contact to arrange a meeting with a colleague who has something more important to offer, Harry interests himself in a young Jewish survivor of the camps he finds watching the house where he lives. She insists the Nazis stole the property from her family before sending them to the gas chambers. And she has seen the Gestapo officer she holds responsible, even though everyone says he is dead. Then suddenly the espionage business becomes less unhurried. Harry's socialist contact is abducted by the Russians and, in return for helping him to defect, the man's colleague promises Harry something really big. He has the names, he says, of two Soviet agents currently working in the British Foreign Office, and that of another who is at the heart of SIS itself. But, as Harry soon discovers, no one is quite what they claim to be. Not the abducted socialist or the colleague with the offer Harry can't refuse ... nor, it seems, the people Harry is working for. Even the Jewish survivor is carrying a shameful secret she appears no longer able to face.

The Catcher of Halensee

Mystery

They found the flying officer hanging in his hut ― another man who couldn’t take the relentless pressure of flying operations, it seemed, although his fellow officers hadn’t liked him much anyway. Besides, what was one more death among the thousands dying on the Western Front?Except that this man’s family had connections to Field Marshal Kitchener and no one wanted him distracted on the eve of the big push on the Somme. So Investigator Miller is sent to the squadron to tie up the loose ends, to tidy the incident away. For some reason they think he is well-equipped for that sort of thing.Only it is all Miller can do to keep himself alive, flying daily over the enemy lines. And then he finds the suicide isn’t quite as straightforward as it is supposed to be. Particularly when a second man turns up dead, purportedly shot with his own pistol...Set against the backdrop of the Great War and infused with a sense of intrigue and high drama, this is a novel of unsettling force. With a keen eye for detail, Oldman evokes the brutality of mud splattered battlefields and aerial combat, bringing the reader right up close to the action. As events spiral and the war continues to impact upon the investigation, peril and suspense combine to create a real sense of unease and urgency, leading towards an unexpected and fascinating conclusion.

On Wings of Death

Claymore Press

England, 1947. It’s an Arctic January day, one of the coldest winters on record. A man on a deserted East Anglian beach strips naked, neatly folds his clothes and wades into the icy waters. Walks to his death. His final moments are watched by Harry Tennant. The ex-copper has been assigned to observe his target by British Intelligence. The dead man is Joseph Wolff. He is a Russian Jew. He is also a professor of mathematics at Oxford University. All Harry knows is that Wolff had been doing some sort of secret work during the war. So when Wolff waded into the sea and drowned himself, he could not make sense of it. Back in the hotel room where Woolf was staying, Harry discovers an unfinished note hinting of betrayal. Harry can’t resist following a trail of unanswered questions buzzing in his head. It’s a long and tortuous trail that leaves him just staring in the ever more inscrutable face of British Intelligence. David J Oldman’s compassionate and compelling Requiem for a Patriot offers a fictional version of what was happening in Britain during and immediately after of the Second World War as East and West drew closer and closer to head-on collision. It explores a shocking secret. Thoroughly researched and based on actual events, the novel succeeds in combining all-too-human stories with political intrigue, spy rings and cold-blooded murder. It paints a frightening picture of the helplessness of the individual when faced by the monolith that is the state. Born into the austerity of post-war Britain, David J. Oldman began writing in his early twenties. Frequently humorous, and often moving, his books are an examination of ordinary people caught up in life-changing events beyond their control. He presently lives with his wife in the New Forest in the south of England pursuing his deep interest in history, writers and writing. Also published by Endeavour Media is Oldman’s The Unquiet Grave.

Requiem for a Patriot (Captain Harry Tennant Mystery)

Sifting the Ashes

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