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SECRETS: AN EROTIC SPY MYSTERY
Karl tells this story of espionage, murderous revenge and romantic transgressive love. He’s an intelligence analyst, who was seriously injured escaping the assassins who shot dead his colleague, Gemma. The manner of her death affected him badly because they were former lovers, and still the closest of friends.
He is desperate to discover who betrayed them, but when he leaves hospital to begin three months sick leave he is suffering PTSD plus irrational guilt, and emotionally vulnerable. So, he needs help.
Knowing he must first recuperate, he books a villa in a Northumbrian seaside town with pleasant childhood memories, near friends. His cover is that of the commercial artist he used to be, injured in a bad car crash. Almost immediately, an attractive and seductive, but secretive, older woman accosts him.
‘You’re a strange woman,’ he says soon after they first meet. ‘Stranger than you yet know,’ she replies.
Her assertive personality provides the emotional support he needs, partly because of a shared interest in art - given impetus when he draws her portrait. She is impressed by his artistic ability and commissions intimate studies of herself as she draws him into an undeclared female-led relationship which he recognises, but finds reassuring.
Nevertheless, he is cautious. Some people they encounter address her as “Countess”, but is she? And - hiding his own dark secrets, as well as his real identity - dare he trust her?
He hopes his former university tutor, the man who recruited him into The Office, Lord Manstead – “Lordy” to his friends – will help him find the traitor. But the help comes from an unexpected quarter, Lady Virginia, Lordy’s much younger wife, who Karl has always held a secret torch for.
She has identified a suspect, but needs to unearth corroboration which without drawing attention. Unwilling to alert Lordy for fear he will prematurely reveal the lead without adequate supporting evidence, Lady Virginia asks Karl to find a way to divert attention from her enquiries, and they start to work together.
While the hunt for the traitor mounts to an astonishing climax of murderous revenge, Karl suffers another deeply affecting personal loss when Lordy dies, and “The Countess’s” past is slowly revealed…
a past that, as Lady Virginia remarks,
‘…isn’t just another country, it’s another planet viewed through inadequate telescopes of the kind that led us to believe there were canals on Mars.’
And it shows an earlier existence that could tempt Karl to reveal his own deeply dark desires.
As unsuspected passions are revealed, and agonising sexual secrets are hauled into the light, Karl is torn by his transgressive love of both women, but must decide who he is committed to, even while he is the only one who knows that a renewed threat of assassination exits. And when it comes…
He is desperate to discover who betrayed them, but when he leaves hospital to begin three months sick leave he is suffering PTSD plus irrational guilt, and emotionally vulnerable. So, he needs help.
Knowing he must first recuperate, he books a villa in a Northumbrian seaside town with pleasant childhood memories, near friends. His cover is that of the commercial artist he used to be, injured in a bad car crash. Almost immediately, an attractive and seductive, but secretive, older woman accosts him.
‘You’re a strange woman,’ he says soon after they first meet. ‘Stranger than you yet know,’ she replies.
Her assertive personality provides the emotional support he needs, partly because of a shared interest in art - given impetus when he draws her portrait. She is impressed by his artistic ability and commissions intimate studies of herself as she draws him into an undeclared female-led relationship which he recognises, but finds reassuring.
Nevertheless, he is cautious. Some people they encounter address her as “Countess”, but is she? And - hiding his own dark secrets, as well as his real identity - dare he trust her?
He hopes his former university tutor, the man who recruited him into The Office, Lord Manstead – “Lordy” to his friends – will help him find the traitor. But the help comes from an unexpected quarter, Lady Virginia, Lordy’s much younger wife, who Karl has always held a secret torch for.
She has identified a suspect, but needs to unearth corroboration which without drawing attention. Unwilling to alert Lordy for fear he will prematurely reveal the lead without adequate supporting evidence, Lady Virginia asks Karl to find a way to divert attention from her enquiries, and they start to work together.
While the hunt for the traitor mounts to an astonishing climax of murderous revenge, Karl suffers another deeply affecting personal loss when Lordy dies, and “The Countess’s” past is slowly revealed…
a past that, as Lady Virginia remarks,
‘…isn’t just another country, it’s another planet viewed through inadequate telescopes of the kind that led us to believe there were canals on Mars.’
And it shows an earlier existence that could tempt Karl to reveal his own deeply dark desires.
As unsuspected passions are revealed, and agonising sexual secrets are hauled into the light, Karl is torn by his transgressive love of both women, but must decide who he is committed to, even while he is the only one who knows that a renewed threat of assassination exits. And when it comes…
315 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2022
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