The fiction elements in The Best of Our Spies are never very far from the truth. I hope that I have achieved that, though that is something for the reader to judge. On the other hand, you want the book to be seamless, so that the pace of the story, the plot and the characters carry the reader along. It is not easy to achieve that: on the one hand you want the ‘joins’ between fact and fiction to be apparent, so that the reader does not feel that they are being misled. The trick then is to ensure that this research does not sit too heavily, that it does not read like a history book as opposed to a novel. I used the standard journalistic technique of ensuring that I had at least two sources on all the facts that I used in the book. I visited most of the locations in the book I carried out some primary research in both Britain and France and kept a large pile of history books by the side of my desk to consult whenever necessary. Of course, it would be wrong to pretend that The Best of Our Spies is anything other than a work of fiction, but I did go to some considerable extent to ensure that where the novel was obviously dealing with matters of fact, then it was as authentic as possible. Not only is it a sensitive one, still fresh in many people’s memory, but it is also a subject that many people know an awful lot about. This balance of fact and fiction is a tricky one, especially when dealing with a topic such as the Second World War. What I describe there did not actually happen, but like most of the book, it is a careful mixture of fact and fiction. Those two paragraphs summarise a substantial chunk of Chapter Four of my first novel, The Best of Our Spies.

Once she could tell that it was safe, she crossed the road and entered the small park.

Her destination was the narrow strip of park known as Twyford Gardens, which runs parallel to the northern side of Uxbridge Road. She turned right and, staying on the southern side of Uxbridge Road walked about four hundred yards in the direction of Acton. She was wearing a woollen scarf around her head and a raincoat described as being “closer to shabby than smart”. Just before eleven o’clock in the morning of the first Sunday in May 1941, a French woman in her mid-twenties emerged from Ealing Common station. The characters were lively and the pace brilliantly maintained.” “A cracking read which reminded me of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps. The Best of Our Spies By Alex Gerlis The Best of Our SpiesĮspionage,adventure,drama and love by local author Alex Gerlis Related Linksįormer BBC journalist turned author Alex GerlisĪ, and .uk

The Best of Our Spies by Alex Gerlis