Mission: Falklands is the fourth in
the Tana Standish psychic spy thriller series.
The
Tana Standish missions are a mixture of fact and fiction but with ‘a nifty
twist’, as one reviewer put it. The ‘smart, sexy female protagonist isn’t just
a rare child survivor from Warsaw’s WWII ghetto. Nor is she merely a highly
skilled covert operative, brought up by the British to be extremely effective
against the KGB. Tana Standish has one more thing going for her: psychic
talents. There’s nothing outlandish in the psi-spy’s capabilities – they’re
neatly underplayed, a talent which isn’t understood or entirely controllable
but which frequently tips the odds in her favour.’
Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia,
1975).
Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978).
Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan,
1979-1980).
Mission: Falklands (Argentina, the
Falkland Islands, and South Georgia, 1982).
[All
of the above are available on Amazon in paperback and e-book format]
It
took thirty-four years for my original Tana Standish psychic spy novel The Ouija Message to grow and improve
and eventually transmogrify into Mission:
Prague. One of my first versions was rejected by Robert Hale with the
comment that it was better than many books that were published but they ‘didn’t
do fantasy’. (They accepted my first book sale in 2007, a western!). It came close a few times to being accepted but in retrospect I’m
glad it didn’t get published earlier. The characters and the story required
more depth, more time to evolve. Naturally, there has to be a willingness to
suspend disbelief regarding psychic abilities! Then again, most fiction is
fantasy anyway.
Prague garnered good
reviews, such as ‘Interestingly, Morton sells it as a true story passed to him
by an agent and published as fiction, a literary ploy often used by master
thriller writer Jack Higgins. Let’s just say that it works better than Higgins.’
– Danny Collins, author of The Bloodiest Battles.
Each book begins with my first person narration. I
receive a manuscript from a secret agent which recounts one of Tana’s missions.
Here’s an excerpt of the Prologue from Mission: Falklands:
Beyond
the headland the North Sea was grey and turbulent, white horses racing towards
the shore. Leaden clouds swirled, harbingers of rain, threatening another bleak
December day. I managed to find a parking space for my Dacia Sandero on the
road opposite the Octagon Tower, built in 1720, in the Northumberland town of
Seaton Sluice – known colloquially as ‘the Sluice’ – half-way between Whitley
Bay and Blyth.
I walked the short distance past a
dry-stone wall towards the King’s Arms, a large three-storey whitewashed
sandstone pub. Almost everywhere you went in the north-east was steeped in
history and this Grade II listed public house was no exception, built around
1764. Overlooking the small harbour and Seaton Burn with its smattering of
small boats beached on mud, it had started out as an overseer’s house, and then
became the King’s Arms Hotel and coach house. In the nineteenth century the
coach house was used by HM Coastguard on the lookout for contraband smugglers.
On the left was a short bridge which crossed
a manmade channel blasted out in the 1760s by Sir John Delaval and named ‘the
cut’; the bridge linked the newly formed ‘Rocky Island’ to the mainland and is
now adorned with love-padlocks.
Despite the slight chill in the air and
the threat of rain, a handful of male and female regulars in shorts and T-shirts
sat drinking at wooden tables outside in an area roped-off with beer-barrels: the
usual tough north-easterners.
Keith Tyson, retired spy, stood waiting
for me at the entrance porch, as punctual as ever. I was pleased to see under
his arm he carried a familiar leather valise though it was now a little
careworn – a bit like him.
The stories about her missions are told in multiple
third person narrative, merging fact and fiction. Part of the inspiration for
the series stems from my interest in history.
Wherever possible I have tried to write about
places I’ve seen or visited, such as Gosport’s Fort Monkton, the Khyber Pass,
Belize, Bahrein, the United States, the Falklands and South Georgia. Other
places have required considerable research. In Mission: Tehran at a
critical point there is an earthquake in Yazd; that actually happened on the
date shown in the book. An episode in Mission: Falklands that involved
two Soviets in Altun Ha is derived from my trek there. Another sequence
describes a meal in the Pink House in Savannah, Georgia, which I’ve frequented.
My memories of two days on South Georgia informed a section of the story too. And
so on...
Tana
has a few contacts in Argentina and several friends who suffer at the hands of
the military regime. Tana is determined to help them. And of course betrayal
lurks in the shadows... When she embarks on her rescue crusade she learns a
devastating fact that changes everything and thrusts her towards the Falkland Islands
and inhospitable South Georgia at the outset of the historic conflict...
Inevitably
Argentina’s ‘disappeared’ and ‘death flights’ are relevant. As with all the
books in the series, I’ve strived to inject realism even with the fantasy
concept of psychics. As one reviewer has stated, ‘Such is the level of detail
and ambition that Morton soon sweeps up the reader in the narrative and creates
so convincing a canvas that we can easily accept the central conceit. Bouncing
between different times and locations, he has created a book which feels big in
scope, an adventure story with a supernaturally gifted protagonist that still
feels absolutely real.’
