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The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Notorious Cold War Killer
In 1978 the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. His murder is the most iconic killing in almost five decades of the Cold War, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it.
The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.
Written as a modern-day thriller, and drawing on an incredible thirty-year cache of original documents and recordings and never-before-seen archive material -- some not even seen by police or secret services -- this is a jaw-dropping and page-turning search for justice in the murky underworld of intelligence and across the shifting sands of spycraft.
The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.
Written as a modern-day thriller, and drawing on an incredible thirty-year cache of original documents and recordings and never-before-seen archive material -- some not even seen by police or secret services -- this is a jaw-dropping and page-turning search for justice in the murky underworld of intelligence and across the shifting sands of spycraft.
336 pages, Paperback
First published July 11, 2024
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744 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
August 19, 2025
I can remember the umbrella murder being on the TV news in the UK when it happened. I was in my late teens at the time. It’s the sort of event that stays in the memory, since it was so unusual and seemed straight out of a spy movie. For anyone unfamiliar with the case, in 1978 a Bulgarian dissident and political exile, Georgi Markov, was murdered in London with a poisoned micro-pellet which contemporary reports suggested had been delivered via an umbrella adapted for the purpose. It was widely accepted that this had been done by the Bulgarian secret service, probably with technological assistance from the KGB. I listened to the audiobook version of the book.
The Danish author, Ulrik Skotte, was working as a sports journalist in 1994 when he was given a contact for a documentary filmmaker, Franco Invernizzi, an Italian living in Copenhagen. Skotte had a side interest in the history of the Cold War. Invernizzi said that he knew the identity of Markov’s killer, identifying one Francesco Gullino, a crooked art dealer, who was also an Italian living in Copenhagen. Invernizzi was planning to make a film on the case, and asked Skotte to collaborate on his investigation. Skotte would write a book to complement Invernizzi’s film.
For about the first 40% of the book, I wasn’t sure where it was leading. There were some interesting aspects, particularly featuring a trip to Bulgaria in the 90s, but this initial section of the book was really about Skotte’s relationship with Invernizzi, who was secretive about his work and refused to share information. For around 2 years Skotte worked with Invernizzi, but for the most part the investigation went round in circles and got no further forward. Part of the issue was that Invernizzi was convinced some wider conspiracy was afoot, and that Gullino had not been arrested because he was a double agent for a western intelligence service, and therefore protected by them. Skotte decided that Invernizzi would not finish his documentary until he had found evidence to support his hypothesis, which would probably be never, so he quit the project.
It wasn’t until the Salisbury poisonings of 2018 that Skotte took a renewed interest in the Markov case, the similarities jolting his memory. What he found, as he started to re-investigate, disturbed him greatly and added to his determination. What follows is a well-told and fascinating investigation, with a quite remarkable ending.
The Danish author, Ulrik Skotte, was working as a sports journalist in 1994 when he was given a contact for a documentary filmmaker, Franco Invernizzi, an Italian living in Copenhagen. Skotte had a side interest in the history of the Cold War. Invernizzi said that he knew the identity of Markov’s killer, identifying one Francesco Gullino, a crooked art dealer, who was also an Italian living in Copenhagen. Invernizzi was planning to make a film on the case, and asked Skotte to collaborate on his investigation. Skotte would write a book to complement Invernizzi’s film.
For about the first 40% of the book, I wasn’t sure where it was leading. There were some interesting aspects, particularly featuring a trip to Bulgaria in the 90s, but this initial section of the book was really about Skotte’s relationship with Invernizzi, who was secretive about his work and refused to share information. For around 2 years Skotte worked with Invernizzi, but for the most part the investigation went round in circles and got no further forward. Part of the issue was that Invernizzi was convinced some wider conspiracy was afoot, and that Gullino had not been arrested because he was a double agent for a western intelligence service, and therefore protected by them. Skotte decided that Invernizzi would not finish his documentary until he had found evidence to support his hypothesis, which would probably be never, so he quit the project.
It wasn’t until the Salisbury poisonings of 2018 that Skotte took a renewed interest in the Markov case, the similarities jolting his memory. What he found, as he started to re-investigate, disturbed him greatly and added to his determination. What follows is a well-told and fascinating investigation, with a quite remarkable ending.
July 10, 2024
In 1978, a man with an umbrella and a foreign accent bumps into Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov as he crosses Waterloo Bridge. Markov feels a sharp pain in his leg. The man with the umbrella disappears into a taxi. The next morning, Markov falls ill and, days later, dies in hospital. As strange as any spy thriller, Markov's murder captured the imagination of the media and the public but remained unsolved.
16 years later in Copenhagen, young Danish sports reporter Ulrick Stotte meets enigmatic film maker, Franco Invermizzi, who is sitting on the 'story of the century'. But talking to Invermizzi is like squeezing blood from a stone. He's evasive, paranoid, and protective of his story but enjoys the power of that information and mixes in rumour and conspiracy. But what Stotte learns at that first meeting is that Invermizzi claims to personally know Markov's killer. So begins a relationship and an investigation that spans decades.
This is as much a story of Stotte's investigation as that of Markov's murder. It's an investigation that's dogged, at times frustrating, and sometimes falls by the wayside for the sake of family. It's also a nice tale of teamwork. For Stotte, things don't really happen until he has the right people in place, and it's clear how key each person is. There are deaths and intrigue, curious characters, big characters, and strange characters. But most of all, there's the resolve of two men to tell a story and how a story can take over lives. Despite Stotte's attempts to let go of the investigation, it doesn't let go of him, and he's compelled to see it through to the end. An intriguing read and definitely a case of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction.
16 years later in Copenhagen, young Danish sports reporter Ulrick Stotte meets enigmatic film maker, Franco Invermizzi, who is sitting on the 'story of the century'. But talking to Invermizzi is like squeezing blood from a stone. He's evasive, paranoid, and protective of his story but enjoys the power of that information and mixes in rumour and conspiracy. But what Stotte learns at that first meeting is that Invermizzi claims to personally know Markov's killer. So begins a relationship and an investigation that spans decades.
This is as much a story of Stotte's investigation as that of Markov's murder. It's an investigation that's dogged, at times frustrating, and sometimes falls by the wayside for the sake of family. It's also a nice tale of teamwork. For Stotte, things don't really happen until he has the right people in place, and it's clear how key each person is. There are deaths and intrigue, curious characters, big characters, and strange characters. But most of all, there's the resolve of two men to tell a story and how a story can take over lives. Despite Stotte's attempts to let go of the investigation, it doesn't let go of him, and he's compelled to see it through to the end. An intriguing read and definitely a case of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction.
December 11, 2025
From the get-go this drew me in… a young sports reporter gets introduced to a strange man who says he knows who is responsible for the legendary umbrella murder carried out in London in 1978. He’s ill prepared - and unable to entirely trust his source - but it leads to an obsessive investigation which spans nearly three decades.
He writes well - this is a fascinating non fiction - although the author
possibly draws the tale out longer than necessary… but hey it was decades of his life!
He writes well - this is a fascinating non fiction - although the author
possibly draws the tale out longer than necessary… but hey it was decades of his life!
July 29, 2024
A well-written, diverting enough read, without the satisfying ending of a full confession. Not much you can do if the main suspect refuses to play ball. My only gripe - and it isn't Skotte's fault, so he can't be marked down for it - is the price. £25 for a book this size, Scandalous.
Read
September 28, 2025DNF at 62% because he's just taking his sweet, sweet time
July 6, 2025
I don't know anything about the Cold War and I certainly don't know anything about Russia's reach and the KBG.
I had heard about the assassination of the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. But I didn't know what happened to his killer. So I picked up this book with the hopes of finding the answers. This book had answers but not justice. International power dynamics is murky, secretive, not justice-seeking, and depressing. This book left me feeling unsatisfied and not feeling that Markov got justice.
I don't think this book was as compelling as I'd hoped because Ulrik's connection to much of his research was through a man named Franco, who was a gullible conspiracy theorist who never really got the proof to back up his beliefs. Thankfully, he didn't take all of this information as gospel and he did his own research as well.
I had heard about the assassination of the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. But I didn't know what happened to his killer. So I picked up this book with the hopes of finding the answers. This book had answers but not justice. International power dynamics is murky, secretive, not justice-seeking, and depressing. This book left me feeling unsatisfied and not feeling that Markov got justice.
I don't think this book was as compelling as I'd hoped because Ulrik's connection to much of his research was through a man named Franco, who was a gullible conspiracy theorist who never really got the proof to back up his beliefs. Thankfully, he didn't take all of this information as gospel and he did his own research as well.
Read
July 7, 2024The Umbrella Murder by Ulrik Skotte review – the tireless pursuit of Agent Piccadilly
This masterly investigation, spanning 30 years, into the assassination of a cold war dissident, Georgi Markov, in London in 1978 exposes an assassin worthy of James Bond
The killing of a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, on Waterloo Bridge in September 1978 is a case to clinch the truism that real life is better scripted than fiction. As Markov was crossing the Thames, heading back to BBC headquarters, he bumped into a man with an umbrella and felt a sharp pain in his leg. The man apologised, got in a taxi and disappeared.
Four days later, Markov was dead. Doctors discovered a pinprick irritation on his right thigh. They removed the flesh and found a 1.7mm pellet containing 0.45 mg of ricin, a poison that had almost certainly come from Russia.
From the start the story seemed staged and stylised: a refugee intellectual from behind the iron curtain, now working for the BBC, had been killed in the British capital using an object forever associated with London: a brolly. It later emerged that the assassin had been given the codename Agent Piccadilly. Markov had been attacked on 7 September, the birthday of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s long-term, de facto dictator.
Ulrik Skotte has been on the story since the early 1990s, when he was a rookie journalist working at DR, the Danish broadcasting corporation. He had contacted a perky, anarchist film-maker, Franco Invernizzi, who lived in Copenhagen and who boasted that he knew the real murderer: another Italian who lived in the Danish capital.
The book recreates the early conversations between Skotte and Invernizzi to perfection. Given the decades that have passed, you doubt they are word-for-word authentic, but they convey very convincingly the character of both men. Skotte is eager but frustrated by the older man’s procrastination and his inability to deliver on the promise of an interview with the assassin. Invernizzi is covetous of his story: he’s big-hearted, but paranoid and as the years pass he gets sucked into the quicksand of intelligence conspiracy theories.
Skotte later became a documentary maker, and he paces and structures this book masterfully, jumping back and forwards to fill out the canvas like an impatient painter. Markov emerges as a womaniser with a betting habit, but also as someone who had once been on close personal terms with Zhivkov. The two men used to walk and dine together, which is perhaps why Markov’s subsequent takedowns of Zhivkov from London hurt him so much. There are deft pages on Russia’s mokroye delo, or “wet jobs” – poisonings that evolved from the work of Grigory Mairanovsky, a sadist who had pioneered ways to administer curare, thallium, dimethyl sulfate and ricin to enemies of the Soviet Union.
But the central character of the book is the assumed assassin. Francesco Gullino was born – it does get a bit James Bond at times – in Bra, Piedmont, in 1945. He was brought up by his aunt, who either ran a bar or a brothel, depending on your definition. Sent to a religious secondary school run by monks, he became, in his teens, a wood carver, equestrian and chameleon.
In later years Gullino became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety
In his 20s he started selling secondhand paintings along the Tuscan coast and the Côte d’Azur. He worked for a Turin-based import-export firm, Mondial, that was thought to have links to far-right organisations. Gullino was a confirmed fascist (he carried copies of Mein Kampf) and had soft-porn proclivities: he liked to pay sexworkers to pose for him and was responsible for publishing the erotic novel, Emmanuelle, in Italian.
Gullino had an uncanny ability to calm horses, but was also able to slip into different characters and countries. An Italian fascist working for the Soviet side in the cold war, he veered inexplicably from squalor to international deal-making. He had stacks of empty frames and ran some kind of stolen/counterfeit art scam that had connections to Palermo and, believed Invernizzi, organised crime.
At some point in the mid-70s, Gullino was recruited by Bulgarian secret services in order to duck a smuggling accusation (he had been caught with narcotics, it’s thought, returning to Italy from Turkey). All these details only emerged 20 years later when Soviet archives were opened and various Bulgarian spooks began to testify.
Skotte and his team – he’s generous about the collegiate nature of research – did the hard miles. They interviewed Zhivkov outside Sofia with courtesy but bluntness. He denied any involvement, naturally, but Skotte’s character sketch is in some ways better than a confession. The author also taped a three-hour interview with Gullino a month before he died – as close to closure as the book gets. Gullino walked a fine line between boasting and denying, toying graciously, sometimes childishly, with his interviewer.
There’s no clinching piece of evidence, of course, and Skotte realised, like Invernizzi before him, that Gullino would never be tried. It’s true that he had been in London in September 1978, and he had been interviewed by British and Danish investigators in the 1990s. But in later years he became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety.
Two other deaths lend weight to the evidence against him, though. In 1990, a young sex worker was murdered in Copenhagen. Among the victim’s possessions was a photograph of herself riding a horse (“with Gullino” was written on the back). Gullino provided a false alibi, claiming to have been at a party whose host Skotte tracks down: they deny Gullino was there that night.
Invernizzi himself died in suspicious circumstances. He had appeared in a documentary badly anonymised and had named Gullino as the Markov murderer (until then the Danish media had only used the initials FG). That night, the two men had dinner and Gullino was, according to Invernizzi’s widow, “furious. He felt that Franco [Invernizzi] had betrayed him by going on camera. So they went out to Nordsjælland and ate at some restaurant there. The next day, Franco wakes up feeling terrible. After that, he goes to the hospital. And a day or two later, he’s dead.”
Most of us on the Italian true-crime beat have always assumed that the most compelling Italian crime story linked to London was the murder of Roberto Calvi, found under Blackfriars’ Bridge in 1982. But Skotte tells the Markov story so crisply that this other bridge killing, in 1978, seems even more poignant: somehow more international, evocative and satisfyingly odd.
From the Guardian Sunday 7th July 2024
This masterly investigation, spanning 30 years, into the assassination of a cold war dissident, Georgi Markov, in London in 1978 exposes an assassin worthy of James Bond
The killing of a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, on Waterloo Bridge in September 1978 is a case to clinch the truism that real life is better scripted than fiction. As Markov was crossing the Thames, heading back to BBC headquarters, he bumped into a man with an umbrella and felt a sharp pain in his leg. The man apologised, got in a taxi and disappeared.
Four days later, Markov was dead. Doctors discovered a pinprick irritation on his right thigh. They removed the flesh and found a 1.7mm pellet containing 0.45 mg of ricin, a poison that had almost certainly come from Russia.
From the start the story seemed staged and stylised: a refugee intellectual from behind the iron curtain, now working for the BBC, had been killed in the British capital using an object forever associated with London: a brolly. It later emerged that the assassin had been given the codename Agent Piccadilly. Markov had been attacked on 7 September, the birthday of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s long-term, de facto dictator.
Ulrik Skotte has been on the story since the early 1990s, when he was a rookie journalist working at DR, the Danish broadcasting corporation. He had contacted a perky, anarchist film-maker, Franco Invernizzi, who lived in Copenhagen and who boasted that he knew the real murderer: another Italian who lived in the Danish capital.
The book recreates the early conversations between Skotte and Invernizzi to perfection. Given the decades that have passed, you doubt they are word-for-word authentic, but they convey very convincingly the character of both men. Skotte is eager but frustrated by the older man’s procrastination and his inability to deliver on the promise of an interview with the assassin. Invernizzi is covetous of his story: he’s big-hearted, but paranoid and as the years pass he gets sucked into the quicksand of intelligence conspiracy theories.
Skotte later became a documentary maker, and he paces and structures this book masterfully, jumping back and forwards to fill out the canvas like an impatient painter. Markov emerges as a womaniser with a betting habit, but also as someone who had once been on close personal terms with Zhivkov. The two men used to walk and dine together, which is perhaps why Markov’s subsequent takedowns of Zhivkov from London hurt him so much. There are deft pages on Russia’s mokroye delo, or “wet jobs” – poisonings that evolved from the work of Grigory Mairanovsky, a sadist who had pioneered ways to administer curare, thallium, dimethyl sulfate and ricin to enemies of the Soviet Union.
But the central character of the book is the assumed assassin. Francesco Gullino was born – it does get a bit James Bond at times – in Bra, Piedmont, in 1945. He was brought up by his aunt, who either ran a bar or a brothel, depending on your definition. Sent to a religious secondary school run by monks, he became, in his teens, a wood carver, equestrian and chameleon.
In later years Gullino became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety
In his 20s he started selling secondhand paintings along the Tuscan coast and the Côte d’Azur. He worked for a Turin-based import-export firm, Mondial, that was thought to have links to far-right organisations. Gullino was a confirmed fascist (he carried copies of Mein Kampf) and had soft-porn proclivities: he liked to pay sexworkers to pose for him and was responsible for publishing the erotic novel, Emmanuelle, in Italian.
Gullino had an uncanny ability to calm horses, but was also able to slip into different characters and countries. An Italian fascist working for the Soviet side in the cold war, he veered inexplicably from squalor to international deal-making. He had stacks of empty frames and ran some kind of stolen/counterfeit art scam that had connections to Palermo and, believed Invernizzi, organised crime.
At some point in the mid-70s, Gullino was recruited by Bulgarian secret services in order to duck a smuggling accusation (he had been caught with narcotics, it’s thought, returning to Italy from Turkey). All these details only emerged 20 years later when Soviet archives were opened and various Bulgarian spooks began to testify.
Skotte and his team – he’s generous about the collegiate nature of research – did the hard miles. They interviewed Zhivkov outside Sofia with courtesy but bluntness. He denied any involvement, naturally, but Skotte’s character sketch is in some ways better than a confession. The author also taped a three-hour interview with Gullino a month before he died – as close to closure as the book gets. Gullino walked a fine line between boasting and denying, toying graciously, sometimes childishly, with his interviewer.
There’s no clinching piece of evidence, of course, and Skotte realised, like Invernizzi before him, that Gullino would never be tried. It’s true that he had been in London in September 1978, and he had been interviewed by British and Danish investigators in the 1990s. But in later years he became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety.
Two other deaths lend weight to the evidence against him, though. In 1990, a young sex worker was murdered in Copenhagen. Among the victim’s possessions was a photograph of herself riding a horse (“with Gullino” was written on the back). Gullino provided a false alibi, claiming to have been at a party whose host Skotte tracks down: they deny Gullino was there that night.
Invernizzi himself died in suspicious circumstances. He had appeared in a documentary badly anonymised and had named Gullino as the Markov murderer (until then the Danish media had only used the initials FG). That night, the two men had dinner and Gullino was, according to Invernizzi’s widow, “furious. He felt that Franco [Invernizzi] had betrayed him by going on camera. So they went out to Nordsjælland and ate at some restaurant there. The next day, Franco wakes up feeling terrible. After that, he goes to the hospital. And a day or two later, he’s dead.”
Most of us on the Italian true-crime beat have always assumed that the most compelling Italian crime story linked to London was the murder of Roberto Calvi, found under Blackfriars’ Bridge in 1982. But Skotte tells the Markov story so crisply that this other bridge killing, in 1978, seems even more poignant: somehow more international, evocative and satisfyingly odd.
From the Guardian Sunday 7th July 2024
December 16, 2025
Uskomaton ja kaikessa karmeudessaan kiehtovakin tarina, parempi kuin moni dekkari. Puolessavälissä kirjaa ei ollut ollenkaan selvää miten tämä tutkinta päättyy. Nykyaikana Bellingcatit sun muut selvittävät ihmisten liikkeitä aivan toisella tavalla ja nopeudella. Tässä oli menneen maailman havinaa aika paljon. Entisessä maailmassa pystyit elämään suht huomaamatta jossakin pikkukylässä, nyt digitaalisessa maailmassa se on paljon vaikeampaa.
September 9, 2024
Outstanding story of the murder of Georgi Markov and how his alleged killer was tracked down. I would have liked some more detail on certain parts, especially Operation Gladio and perhaps Gullino's other activities, but that may well have spoilt the pace of the book, which was very good. Contender for my book of the year.
June 4, 2025
Full of twists and turns that you’d expect from a good spy thriller.
September 19, 2025
The Umbrella Murder - the assassination of Bulgarian exile and dissident Georgi Markov by the introduction of a metal pellet containing ricin, in the middle of London in 1978, is one of those legendary stories of the Cold War. Mysterious poisons, administered via James Bond-style gadgetry, possibly even via a ballistic mechanism in an umbrella- that most British of all accessories. Suspected collusion/collaboration between the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB. And above all: no suspects, no confessions, no arrests, no prosecutions.
And so this story has taken on some of the allure of the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, or the murder of Olaf Palme - whodunnit and who is hiding what? It is only to be expected that it would attract both serious investigators and conspiracy buffs.
This book struck me as a strange, and not successful hybrid between different genres. On one hand, it's a memoir by a Danish journalist who tells us how he has been intermittently interested in this story since the early 1990s. At that time, as a fledgling sports (!) journalist, he was put in touch with an Italian living in Copenhagen, one Franco Invernizzi, who was convinced that the umbrella murderer was another Italian living in Copenhagen, Francesco Gullino, who had at some point lived in Franco's house and behaved very mysteriously indeed. Ulrik and Franco spend a lot of time discussing the possibility of a book (to be written by Ulrik) and a documentary (to be directed by Franco) about the umbrella murder, but nothing concrete comes of it, partly because Franco is a confabulist and conspiracy theorist who is reluctant to actually give Ulrik access to Francesco.
Decades later, Ulrik's interest in Francesco Gullino is reawakened. Now a successful documentary filmmaker himself, he assembles a crew of researchers, translators and camera operators, and sets out to find Francesco Gullino. And yes, he manages to track him down and finds himself with an old man who is either demented or dissembling. No spectacular confession is forthcoming - anticlimax! And a short while later the aged Francesco is found dead in his apartment.
Soooo.... was Francesco Gullino the umbrella murderer? I really couldn't come to a conclusion about this, because so much of the evidence provided was scircumstantial and incomplete. He may have been recruited by the Bulgarian secret service in the early 1970s. He may have been in London at the time of the murder. He certainly did lead a mysterious life, moving about Europe with various businesses, alternatively broke and wealthy, in possession of different passports and a satellite phone in the early 1990s. But would the KGB really have confided this "wet work" mission to a chancer like Francesco? And did the KGB really accommodate their Bulgarian colleague's request for a high-tech assassination device, simply because the Bulgarian party leader, Todorov, was so peeved at his former friend Markov's defection? In the grand scheme of things, Markov was a very small fish in the anti-communist media in the West.
I was also irritated by the fake sense of mystery and urgency in the book. Finding Gullino is a Herculean task, a challenge of ingenuity and perseverance!! Well...no... actually, not really. The author suddenly remembers that Gullino had been filmed by another documentary filmmaker a few years earlier, and an image search of stills of that film made it straightforward to locate Gullino's house. Even better... in one of the videos that Franco made of Francesco Gullino, the latter obligingly spells out his email address.
Similarly, I simply did not buy the suggestion of personal danger in this quest. Seriously, the Danish secret service has nothing better to do than to tail a young sports journalist when he drives home from a conversation with a scatterbrain like Franco? Does the fact that some people don't want to talk to journalists have to be attributed to mysterious forces threatening them? Did Ulrik really expect that ex-party leader Todorov, now on house arrest, would suddenly confess to having ordered this hit on his former friend?
Very little of this book made sense, and it seemed to me that in the absence of a clear chain of evidence, the author chose to fill his book with "let me tell you about my quest" type material.
And so this story has taken on some of the allure of the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, or the murder of Olaf Palme - whodunnit and who is hiding what? It is only to be expected that it would attract both serious investigators and conspiracy buffs.
This book struck me as a strange, and not successful hybrid between different genres. On one hand, it's a memoir by a Danish journalist who tells us how he has been intermittently interested in this story since the early 1990s. At that time, as a fledgling sports (!) journalist, he was put in touch with an Italian living in Copenhagen, one Franco Invernizzi, who was convinced that the umbrella murderer was another Italian living in Copenhagen, Francesco Gullino, who had at some point lived in Franco's house and behaved very mysteriously indeed. Ulrik and Franco spend a lot of time discussing the possibility of a book (to be written by Ulrik) and a documentary (to be directed by Franco) about the umbrella murder, but nothing concrete comes of it, partly because Franco is a confabulist and conspiracy theorist who is reluctant to actually give Ulrik access to Francesco.
Decades later, Ulrik's interest in Francesco Gullino is reawakened. Now a successful documentary filmmaker himself, he assembles a crew of researchers, translators and camera operators, and sets out to find Francesco Gullino. And yes, he manages to track him down and finds himself with an old man who is either demented or dissembling. No spectacular confession is forthcoming - anticlimax! And a short while later the aged Francesco is found dead in his apartment.
Soooo.... was Francesco Gullino the umbrella murderer? I really couldn't come to a conclusion about this, because so much of the evidence provided was scircumstantial and incomplete. He may have been recruited by the Bulgarian secret service in the early 1970s. He may have been in London at the time of the murder. He certainly did lead a mysterious life, moving about Europe with various businesses, alternatively broke and wealthy, in possession of different passports and a satellite phone in the early 1990s. But would the KGB really have confided this "wet work" mission to a chancer like Francesco? And did the KGB really accommodate their Bulgarian colleague's request for a high-tech assassination device, simply because the Bulgarian party leader, Todorov, was so peeved at his former friend Markov's defection? In the grand scheme of things, Markov was a very small fish in the anti-communist media in the West.
I was also irritated by the fake sense of mystery and urgency in the book. Finding Gullino is a Herculean task, a challenge of ingenuity and perseverance!! Well...no... actually, not really. The author suddenly remembers that Gullino had been filmed by another documentary filmmaker a few years earlier, and an image search of stills of that film made it straightforward to locate Gullino's house. Even better... in one of the videos that Franco made of Francesco Gullino, the latter obligingly spells out his email address.
Similarly, I simply did not buy the suggestion of personal danger in this quest. Seriously, the Danish secret service has nothing better to do than to tail a young sports journalist when he drives home from a conversation with a scatterbrain like Franco? Does the fact that some people don't want to talk to journalists have to be attributed to mysterious forces threatening them? Did Ulrik really expect that ex-party leader Todorov, now on house arrest, would suddenly confess to having ordered this hit on his former friend?
Very little of this book made sense, and it seemed to me that in the absence of a clear chain of evidence, the author chose to fill his book with "let me tell you about my quest" type material.
September 3, 2024
This is a true story about the mysterious Cold War-era assassination of Georgi Markov that reads like a page-turning thriller. It is undoubtedly one of the most readable historical nonfiction books I've encountered.
While you receive sufficient factual detail to place this story in a historical context, it is certainly not a history book in the traditional sense. This is a book written by a journalist, not a historian, and it is all the better for it.
In 1978, Markov was walking across Waterloo Bridge when he bumped into a man with an umbrella who injected him with a pellet likely containing ricin. He died four days later. The man responsible for the murder, codenamed Agent Piccadilly by the Bulgarian intelligence services, then vanished.
Skotte, according to his telling, first became involved in the story of the Umbrella Murder years later in the early 1990s while working as a young sports journalist in Denmark. He was approached by Franco Invernizzi, an Italian filmmaker with an anarchist bent who had become obsessed with the Umbrella Murder after realising one of his acquaintances and political opposites- a mysterious Italian fascist called Francesco Gullino was responsible. Despite Franco's conviction regarding Gullino the evidence proving his guilt proved hard to come by. Eventually Skotte gave up on the story having fallen out with Franco.
Years later, Skotte becomes aware of Franco's death in mysterious circumstances. He is now a documentary filmmaker and decides to reopen his investigation into Markov's murder. He assembles a team to help him with the work, and together, they trawl through Franco's files on the case and approach key figures in the government and security services in Italy, Denmark, Bulgaria, and the UK. Slowly, the truth becomes clear as the evidence assembles.
Finally, Skotte manages to score an interview with Gullino in which the Italian toys with the author, never giving a clear answer to the question of his guilt. Three months later he died. While a clear confession would have bullet-proofed the story, I think the evidence unearthed in this book would have been strong enough for even a skeptical jury to convict Gullino had he ever been brought to justice. It is a shame that he was not, as it seems likely Markov was not the only person Gullin killed. The evidence strongly indicates he also murdered at least one sex worker as well as his former friend Franco.
In The Umbrella Murder, Skotte deftly blends his journey to uncover the truth in this case with historical and medical detail, never getting too bogged down in any one place and recounts the sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous encounters he had along the way.
I would highly recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in this case, Cold War history, investigative journalism, or telling a good story.
While you receive sufficient factual detail to place this story in a historical context, it is certainly not a history book in the traditional sense. This is a book written by a journalist, not a historian, and it is all the better for it.
In 1978, Markov was walking across Waterloo Bridge when he bumped into a man with an umbrella who injected him with a pellet likely containing ricin. He died four days later. The man responsible for the murder, codenamed Agent Piccadilly by the Bulgarian intelligence services, then vanished.
Skotte, according to his telling, first became involved in the story of the Umbrella Murder years later in the early 1990s while working as a young sports journalist in Denmark. He was approached by Franco Invernizzi, an Italian filmmaker with an anarchist bent who had become obsessed with the Umbrella Murder after realising one of his acquaintances and political opposites- a mysterious Italian fascist called Francesco Gullino was responsible. Despite Franco's conviction regarding Gullino the evidence proving his guilt proved hard to come by. Eventually Skotte gave up on the story having fallen out with Franco.
Years later, Skotte becomes aware of Franco's death in mysterious circumstances. He is now a documentary filmmaker and decides to reopen his investigation into Markov's murder. He assembles a team to help him with the work, and together, they trawl through Franco's files on the case and approach key figures in the government and security services in Italy, Denmark, Bulgaria, and the UK. Slowly, the truth becomes clear as the evidence assembles.
Finally, Skotte manages to score an interview with Gullino in which the Italian toys with the author, never giving a clear answer to the question of his guilt. Three months later he died. While a clear confession would have bullet-proofed the story, I think the evidence unearthed in this book would have been strong enough for even a skeptical jury to convict Gullino had he ever been brought to justice. It is a shame that he was not, as it seems likely Markov was not the only person Gullin killed. The evidence strongly indicates he also murdered at least one sex worker as well as his former friend Franco.
In The Umbrella Murder, Skotte deftly blends his journey to uncover the truth in this case with historical and medical detail, never getting too bogged down in any one place and recounts the sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous encounters he had along the way.
I would highly recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in this case, Cold War history, investigative journalism, or telling a good story.
August 13, 2024
For those of us interested in spy novels, who love Mick Herron and Le Carre, this is a story that may well live in your memory. I was twelve in 1978, so am old enough to recall this story on the news - a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, was crossing Waterloo Bridge when he was stabbed by a poison tipped umbrella. Markov was an author, an activist, a playwright, whose life ended and who, despite the best attempts of Scotland Yard, nobody was ever charged with his murder. This despite another victim having experienced a similar attack, but thankfully not killed, and another man found dead in similar circumstances.
Fast forward to Danish journalist, Ulrik Skotte, who is a sports reporter and nothing whatever to do with politics or even main news stories, who meets a charismatic Italian, named Franco. Franco carries around a battered brown folder and he reveals he knows who killed Markov - Agent Piccadilly. However, he really does not reveal enough detail and Ulrik, tired of being an outsider, eventually walks away. Franco, he believes, is unable to allow himself to tell this story, or share his access to the man he claims was responsible, Francesco Gullino.
Although Ulrik Skotte walks away and goes on to have a successful career making documentaries, the story stays with him and, twenty years later, after the poisonings in Salisbury, it begins to intrigue him again. Novichok on a door handle, ricin on the tip of an umbrella... Thinking of making the documentary that Franco always wanted to make, he throws himself back into researching who was Gullino, is he still alive and can Ulrik convince him to talk?
This is a fascinating read. It involves spying, involving everything from dead letter drops to murder. For people involved in this story, who pry too hard, do die in suspicious circumstances. At the heart of the book are not only Ulrik, determined to put the story to rest, but the obsessive Franco and, at the heart of things, Gullino himself. A man who posed for photos with umbrellas, who seemingly was protected and able to move around Europe with ease. The umbrella murder was very James Bond and it did cause public interest. However, it also involved a victim and Markov knew almost immediately that he had been poisoned. Unfortunately, by the time that Ulrik Skotte did his documentary and finally wrote this book, those involved were either very elderly or dead, but it is always good to have answers and this is an important book, written not without risk to discover the truth.
Fast forward to Danish journalist, Ulrik Skotte, who is a sports reporter and nothing whatever to do with politics or even main news stories, who meets a charismatic Italian, named Franco. Franco carries around a battered brown folder and he reveals he knows who killed Markov - Agent Piccadilly. However, he really does not reveal enough detail and Ulrik, tired of being an outsider, eventually walks away. Franco, he believes, is unable to allow himself to tell this story, or share his access to the man he claims was responsible, Francesco Gullino.
Although Ulrik Skotte walks away and goes on to have a successful career making documentaries, the story stays with him and, twenty years later, after the poisonings in Salisbury, it begins to intrigue him again. Novichok on a door handle, ricin on the tip of an umbrella... Thinking of making the documentary that Franco always wanted to make, he throws himself back into researching who was Gullino, is he still alive and can Ulrik convince him to talk?
This is a fascinating read. It involves spying, involving everything from dead letter drops to murder. For people involved in this story, who pry too hard, do die in suspicious circumstances. At the heart of the book are not only Ulrik, determined to put the story to rest, but the obsessive Franco and, at the heart of things, Gullino himself. A man who posed for photos with umbrellas, who seemingly was protected and able to move around Europe with ease. The umbrella murder was very James Bond and it did cause public interest. However, it also involved a victim and Markov knew almost immediately that he had been poisoned. Unfortunately, by the time that Ulrik Skotte did his documentary and finally wrote this book, those involved were either very elderly or dead, but it is always good to have answers and this is an important book, written not without risk to discover the truth.
January 20, 2025
At the heart of The Umbrella Murder is the infamous assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978, a crime that has captivated Cold War historians and espionage enthusiasts for decades. Ulrik Skotte, a Danish journalist, embarks on an exhaustive 30-year investigation into the killing, weaving together elements of espionage, political intrigue, and relentless detective work. His pursuit leads him across continents, from encounters with conspiracy theorists to face-to-face meetings with those who may have had direct involvement in the crime.
What sets this book apart is Skotte’s journalistic rigor. While the narrative never strays far from the core mystery, it remains compelling and tightly structured. Skotte presents his findings in an investigative style that is both engaging and informative, ensuring that every detail contributes meaningfully to the overarching narrative. His ability to distill decades of research into a cohesive, suspenseful account is one of the book's greatest strengths.
The Highlights
One of the book’s most impressive aspects is its ability to transport the reader into the high-stakes world of Cold War espionage. Skotte’s meticulous research, drawn from interviews, archival documents, and firsthand encounters, makes this a page-turner that rivals the works of John le Carré and Ben Macintyre. The pacing is taut, and the gradual unraveling of the mystery keeps readers hooked.
The Shortcomings
Despite its gripping narrative, the book leaves some questions unanswered. While Skotte follows every possible lead with impressive dedication, the nature of espionage means definitive answers remain elusive. This is less a flaw of the author and more an inherent limitation of the subject matter—readers seeking clear-cut conclusions may find themselves frustrated by the uncertainty that lingers even after decades of investigation
Final Thoughts
The Umbrella Murder is an absorbing, well-researched, and thrilling exploration of one of the Cold War’s most enigmatic assassinations. It blends true crime, international espionage, and investigative journalism into a narrative that is hard to put down. If you’re drawn to stories of political intrigue, spycraft, and relentless pursuit of the truth, this book is a must-read. Despite its lingering uncertainties, it stands as a testament to journalistic persistence and the complexities of Cold War-era intelligence operations.
What sets this book apart is Skotte’s journalistic rigor. While the narrative never strays far from the core mystery, it remains compelling and tightly structured. Skotte presents his findings in an investigative style that is both engaging and informative, ensuring that every detail contributes meaningfully to the overarching narrative. His ability to distill decades of research into a cohesive, suspenseful account is one of the book's greatest strengths.
The Highlights
One of the book’s most impressive aspects is its ability to transport the reader into the high-stakes world of Cold War espionage. Skotte’s meticulous research, drawn from interviews, archival documents, and firsthand encounters, makes this a page-turner that rivals the works of John le Carré and Ben Macintyre. The pacing is taut, and the gradual unraveling of the mystery keeps readers hooked.
The Shortcomings
Despite its gripping narrative, the book leaves some questions unanswered. While Skotte follows every possible lead with impressive dedication, the nature of espionage means definitive answers remain elusive. This is less a flaw of the author and more an inherent limitation of the subject matter—readers seeking clear-cut conclusions may find themselves frustrated by the uncertainty that lingers even after decades of investigation
Final Thoughts
The Umbrella Murder is an absorbing, well-researched, and thrilling exploration of one of the Cold War’s most enigmatic assassinations. It blends true crime, international espionage, and investigative journalism into a narrative that is hard to put down. If you’re drawn to stories of political intrigue, spycraft, and relentless pursuit of the truth, this book is a must-read. Despite its lingering uncertainties, it stands as a testament to journalistic persistence and the complexities of Cold War-era intelligence operations.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 8, 2025
Με βαθύ ενδιαφέρον για την ιστορία του Ψυχρού Πολέμου και τα non-fiction βιβλία, περίμενα από το "The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer" του Ulrik Skotte μια βαθιά και συναρπαστική ανάλυση μιας από τις πιο μυστηριώδεις δολοφονίες της εποχής. Η υπόθεση αφορά τη δολοφονία του Βούλγαρου διαφωνούντα με το Κομμουνιστικό καθεστώς της Βουλγαρίας, Γκεόργκι Μαρκόφ, το 1978, ο οποίος δηλητηριάστηκε με μια κάψουλα ρικίνης που του εμφύτευσε ένας άντρας με ομπρέλα στο Λονδίνο. Το βιβλίο ακολουθεί την προσπάθεια του αθλητικού! δημοσιογράφου, Ulrik Skotte, να ξεσκεπάσει τα γεγονότα, μέσα από μια πολύχρονη έρευνα και επαφές με μάρτυρες, φτάνοντας στη σχετική αποκάλυψη του πιθανού δράστη, Francesco Gullino.
Το "πρόβλημα" του συγ��εκριμένου βιβλίου είναι ότι δεν με έπεισε.
Ως αναγνώστης που εκτιμά την καθαρή και τεκμηριωμένη αφήγηση, με απογοήτευσε η υπερβολική εστίαση στις προσωπικές εμπειρίες και τη ζωή του συγγραφέα – αν χώρισε, αν παντρεύτηκε ξανά, πόσα παιδιά έκανε ή τις οικονομικές του δυνατότητες να ταξιδέψει στη Βουλγαρία. Αυτά τίποτα δεν συνεισφέρουν στα γεγονότα της δολοφονίας ή στο πώς ανακαλύφθηκε ο δολοφόνος (δεν). Δεν με ενδιαφέρει η προσωπική ζωή του συγγραφέα αλλά η ουσία της υπόθεσης και τα πραγματικά στοιχεία γύρω από αυτό το περίπλοκο έγκλημα.
Στο μέλλον θα ήθελα να διαβάσω ένα βιβλίο που να εστιάζει αποκλειστικά και διεξοδικά στην υπόθεση αυτή, χωρίς να αποσπάται η προσοχή από προσωπικές ιστορίες ή τις ενέργειες του ίδιου του συγγραφέα, ώστε να προσφέρει μια πιο πλήρη, πειστική και σοβαρή εικόνα του εγκλήματος.
Δεν ανταποκρίθηκε στις προσδοκίες μου ως λάτρης της ιστορικής και τεκμηριωμένης αφήγησης.
_Ο τίτλος του βιβλίου είναι: "The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer", όμως στην πραγματικότητα το δεύτερο μέρος δεν ανταποκρίνεται πλήρως στο περιεχόμενο και την αξιοπιστία του έργου. Ο υπότιτλος "The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer" είναι click bait, καθώς το βιβλίο αποτυγχάνει να πείσει για μια τέτοια βαρύγδουπη και ολοκληρωμένη αποκάλυψη. Το: "The Umbrella Murder", που περιγράφει επαρκώς το κεντρικό θέμα του βιβλίου, χωρίς υπερβολές ή παραπλανητικούς προσδιορισμούς.
Το "πρόβλημα" του συγ��εκριμένου βιβλίου είναι ότι δεν με έπεισε.
Ως αναγνώστης που εκτιμά την καθαρή και τεκμηριωμένη αφήγηση, με απογοήτευσε η υπερβολική εστίαση στις προσωπικές εμπειρίες και τη ζωή του συγγραφέα – αν χώρισε, αν παντρεύτηκε ξανά, πόσα παιδιά έκανε ή τις οικονομικές του δυνατότητες να ταξιδέψει στη Βουλγαρία. Αυτά τίποτα δεν συνεισφέρουν στα γεγονότα της δολοφονίας ή στο πώς ανακαλύφθηκε ο δολοφόνος (δεν). Δεν με ενδιαφέρει η προσωπική ζωή του συγγραφέα αλλά η ουσία της υπόθεσης και τα πραγματικά στοιχεία γύρω από αυτό το περίπλοκο έγκλημα.
Στο μέλλον θα ήθελα να διαβάσω ένα βιβλίο που να εστιάζει αποκλειστικά και διεξοδικά στην υπόθεση αυτή, χωρίς να αποσπάται η προσοχή από προσωπικές ιστορίες ή τις ενέργειες του ίδιου του συγγραφέα, ώστε να προσφέρει μια πιο πλήρη, πειστική και σοβαρή εικόνα του εγκλήματος.
Δεν ανταποκρίθηκε στις προσδοκίες μου ως λάτρης της ιστορικής και τεκμηριωμένης αφήγησης.
_Ο τίτλος του βιβλίου είναι: "The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer", όμως στην πραγματικότητα το δεύτερο μέρος δεν ανταποκρίνεται πλήρως στο περιεχόμενο και την αξιοπιστία του έργου. Ο υπότιτλος "The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer" είναι click bait, καθώς το βιβλίο αποτυγχάνει να πείσει για μια τέτοια βαρύγδουπη και ολοκληρωμένη αποκάλυψη. Το: "The Umbrella Murder", που περιγράφει επαρκώς το κεντρικό θέμα του βιβλίου, χωρίς υπερβολές ή παραπλανητικούς προσδιορισμούς.
August 16, 2024
I can well remember the killing of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978 with the newspapers full of the story of a mysterious assassin using a poisoned umbrella to stab their victim on Waterloo Bridge. It was a story that captured the public imagination, although the killer was never found, and the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury in 2018 brought references to the case back to attention.
Danish journalist Ulrik Skotte was brought much closer to these incredible events when he was contacted in the 1990s by a man named Franco, who claimed to have lived with the alleged assassin Francesco Gullino (Codename Piccadilly) and had spent time amassing evidence of the involvement of various nations, espionage services, and other individuals in the killing and its failed investigation. Ulrik is actually a sports reporter, but the case excites and fascinates him and he gets involved in researching it until Franco’s unwillingness to be open and share information eventually drives him away.
The Novichok case triggers memories for Ulrik and he decides to use the greater experience and knowledge that time has given him to try once more to resolve the umbrella killing, bringing together a team to follow up all the threads and attempting to track down Gullino. Of course, many of those involved are now elderly or dead, but the team painstakingly review every scrap of evidence and determinedly follow the trail of Gullino across Europe.
This was a fascinating and very engaging account which illuminates the secrecy and paranoia of the Cold War period and shows all the ramifications of a single notorious crime. I really enjoyed how Ulrik added chapters that explain the background to the case, for example Markov’s early life and his relationship with the Bulgarian dictator Zhivkov, and the use of poisons and poisoned weapons by the secret services. Most of all, I was totally engrossed in the search for the shadowy Gullino and the attempts to answer the many questions posed by the Markov case.
Danish journalist Ulrik Skotte was brought much closer to these incredible events when he was contacted in the 1990s by a man named Franco, who claimed to have lived with the alleged assassin Francesco Gullino (Codename Piccadilly) and had spent time amassing evidence of the involvement of various nations, espionage services, and other individuals in the killing and its failed investigation. Ulrik is actually a sports reporter, but the case excites and fascinates him and he gets involved in researching it until Franco’s unwillingness to be open and share information eventually drives him away.
The Novichok case triggers memories for Ulrik and he decides to use the greater experience and knowledge that time has given him to try once more to resolve the umbrella killing, bringing together a team to follow up all the threads and attempting to track down Gullino. Of course, many of those involved are now elderly or dead, but the team painstakingly review every scrap of evidence and determinedly follow the trail of Gullino across Europe.
This was a fascinating and very engaging account which illuminates the secrecy and paranoia of the Cold War period and shows all the ramifications of a single notorious crime. I really enjoyed how Ulrik added chapters that explain the background to the case, for example Markov’s early life and his relationship with the Bulgarian dictator Zhivkov, and the use of poisons and poisoned weapons by the secret services. Most of all, I was totally engrossed in the search for the shadowy Gullino and the attempts to answer the many questions posed by the Markov case.
August 27, 2025
Entertaining - and would recommend for a quick, easy read.
However, after researching not just a murder but the world of Cold War espionage for 30 years, and with access to unique source material, I wondered whether 300 pages of fairly light content (much of which is about the author rather than the subject, and is highly readable!) is really enough.
The book leaves a huge number of questions, too, beyond those that are perhaps unanswerable such as whether Western intelligence agencies were colluding to cover up information.
For example, it still seems odd a newbie-sports reporter would be hooked up with someone claiming to know the identify of one of the world’s most notorious assassins. Why did no journalist with a background in foreign affairs take an interest? Did he at no point reflect on why he was given the tip, rather than a more experienced colleague?
The author’s revelation about the Danish police being misled over an alibi to an unsolved murder is also remarkable, and raises at the very least questions about the quality of the police investigation. Was there not more to say about this? Did the author not do more work looking into that death, in addition to the two others he was interested in solving?
It also seems odd that he spent four years working on the project from 1994-98 even travelling to interview a former head of state, yet that this seems to have led to nothing in terms of journalistic output at that time.
Anyway, a very entertaining read where perhaps the skill is to have told the story well enough to have left this reader expecting but in truth also wanting more!
However, after researching not just a murder but the world of Cold War espionage for 30 years, and with access to unique source material, I wondered whether 300 pages of fairly light content (much of which is about the author rather than the subject, and is highly readable!) is really enough.
The book leaves a huge number of questions, too, beyond those that are perhaps unanswerable such as whether Western intelligence agencies were colluding to cover up information.
For example, it still seems odd a newbie-sports reporter would be hooked up with someone claiming to know the identify of one of the world’s most notorious assassins. Why did no journalist with a background in foreign affairs take an interest? Did he at no point reflect on why he was given the tip, rather than a more experienced colleague?
The author’s revelation about the Danish police being misled over an alibi to an unsolved murder is also remarkable, and raises at the very least questions about the quality of the police investigation. Was there not more to say about this? Did the author not do more work looking into that death, in addition to the two others he was interested in solving?
It also seems odd that he spent four years working on the project from 1994-98 even travelling to interview a former head of state, yet that this seems to have led to nothing in terms of journalistic output at that time.
Anyway, a very entertaining read where perhaps the skill is to have told the story well enough to have left this reader expecting but in truth also wanting more!
November 18, 2024
A riveting exploration of one of the Cold War’s most infamous cases. Like many other readers, I grew up fascinated by the mysterious umbrella murder on Waterloo Bridge during the Cold War, but Danish investigative journalist Ulrik Skotte takes that intrigue to new heights. Genuinely hard to put down, providing a vivid sense of what it’s like to chase leads in a decades-old mystery after the trail has long gone cold.
The author immerses you in the complexities of the investigation, though at on a few occasions the level of detail can feel a bit excessive. That said, this might be less a flaw and more a testament to my own impatience to crack the case! The depth of information ultimately adds to the realism, making it almost unbelievable that these events are drawn from real life.
Overall, The Umbrella Assassin is an absorbing audiobook listen, perfect for fans of Cold War history, true crime, or anyone who loves the thrill of untangling a seemingly unsolvable mystery.
The author immerses you in the complexities of the investigation, though at on a few occasions the level of detail can feel a bit excessive. That said, this might be less a flaw and more a testament to my own impatience to crack the case! The depth of information ultimately adds to the realism, making it almost unbelievable that these events are drawn from real life.
Overall, The Umbrella Assassin is an absorbing audiobook listen, perfect for fans of Cold War history, true crime, or anyone who loves the thrill of untangling a seemingly unsolvable mystery.
August 16, 2025
In 1978 Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was murdered on Waterloo Bridge, apparently with a poison-tipped umbrella. Unsolved for decades investigative journalist Skotte gives an account of the attempt to figure out who did it. It's interesting, pretty thrilling and not a bad shout for that uncle that likes reading crime/spy/detective books and you never know what to get him. I am that uncle. Although I don't really read that many crime/spy/detective books. I do enjoy films with Daniel Craig being James Bond though. Anyway, well worth a read. 4/5.
January 21, 2025
This was so readable I kept forgetting it wasn't fiction. The way the story is told is so engaging - it's almost impossible to put the book down. The incredible part is that for me the draw wasn't even the Umbrella Murder of Georgi Markov itself - although it was a gripping way to open the book - but the story of those around Ulrik and the investigation they carried out to get to the heart of the case.
dnf
February 9, 2025Another day, another DNF’d book.
The parts around the murder and the people involved were gripping, but the present-day sections—I'm guessing the '90s?—were the complete opposite and just dragged. I get that the author went through hell gathering evidence and chasing leads the filmmaker kept dangling, but why should we have to suffer too? Hmm?
Found a 50-minute documentary—hopefully, it gets straight to the point before I resort to Wikipedia.
The parts around the murder and the people involved were gripping, but the present-day sections—I'm guessing the '90s?—were the complete opposite and just dragged. I get that the author went through hell gathering evidence and chasing leads the filmmaker kept dangling, but why should we have to suffer too? Hmm?
Found a 50-minute documentary—hopefully, it gets straight to the point before I resort to Wikipedia.
April 30, 2025
Absolutely amazing book - but begets so many questions!!! Why is it that Georgi Markov’s “The Truth That Killed” basically unavailable and similarly, Kalin Todorov’s “The Umbrella Murder” also unavailable. And how does this sort of crime go unpunished? Skotte has done a brilliant job trying to chase down this story. I’d be curious if ever the files on Gullino ever come to light from the various national archives!
December 11, 2025
Well written and clearly well researched.. the author spent 27 years trying to solve this case and here he explains the whole experience..
the trouble is it takes a lot of time to progress through the story with many dead ends and frustrations. I began to wish he would hurry up. I have no doubt the process of writing the book was a cathartic way of unloading the memories of the case and its complexities. I found as a reader I was less personally engaged in the outcome.
the trouble is it takes a lot of time to progress through the story with many dead ends and frustrations. I began to wish he would hurry up. I have no doubt the process of writing the book was a cathartic way of unloading the memories of the case and its complexities. I found as a reader I was less personally engaged in the outcome.
September 23, 2025
Fantastic; not just a retelling of such a fascinating and intricate case, but a retelling told by someone who painstakingly spent their life trying to unravel it. This was gripping from start to finish and definitely recommendable to anyone with an interest in the Cold War, investigative journalism and espionage.
Read
April 11, 2025Brilliant! Reads like a thriller, but it's actually history. Too young to remember Georgi Markov, but what happened to him is incredible. Kudos to the author for his persistence and (potential) uncovering of the truth.
September 10, 2025
A very interesting story and a good book to take with you on holiday but while presented as verifiable it is an opinion on a likely answer. Ironically the author falls foul of Franco’s problems with this story and seems unable to ever really end it despite how presented
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
September 25, 2025I recall the infamous 'Umbrella Murder' but was too young to follow it closely. The Danish journalist Ulrik Skotte describes a fascinating web of intrigue and espionage across various European borders. Written in a style akin to a work of fiction, which made it a hard-to-put-down book.
September 25, 2025
Absolutely fascinating, if sometimes rambling, account of one man’s obsession with finding and interviewing the man suspected of the murder of Georgi Markov with a poison pellet of ricin fired by umbrella on Waterloo Bridge.
November 20, 2025
Mystery, ambition, youth, murder, true crime, selfishness, the Cold War, careerism, fear, the pleasure of finding out, friendship, betrayal, refusal, revenge, loneliness, middle age, forgery, and poison (which is a kind of forgery), it’s all here.
October 5, 2024
One of the best non-fiction historic detectives/spy stories I have read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews