'... fight scenes that rival the best of Bourne or Bond'

'Morton knows how to write a kick-ass action sequence, too, with fight scenes that rival the best of Bourne or Bond.'

Thank you Rowena Hoseason for this review on the site 
https://murdermayhemandmore.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/the-tehran-text-the-psychic-spy-returns/

The Tehran Text - e-book available at these Amazon sites:

http://authl.it/56r

Enchanted by the lovely Tana…

The Tana Standish psychic spy series - #2 The Tehran Text

Tana Standish, a child-survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, was adopted by a British naval lieutenant and in 1965 joined the British Secret Intelligence Service. She is a psychic with a photographic memory. Each adventure begins with the passing of a collection of papers and manuscripts to the author (Nik Morton) by one of her secret service associates. He then writes down her experiences.

The first was The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975), and this is followed by The Tehran Text (Iran, 1978), [both of which were previously published (2008 & 2009 respectively), though the latter received minimal exposure as the collapse of the publisher occurred almost at the same time as its release. Both are now available as Crooked Cat e-books.

At least two more adventures are planned: The Khyber Chronicle – (Afghanistan, 1979/80), a work-in-progress, and The Caldera Cryptogram (Argentina, Falklands, 1982).  

Snippets from 6 Amazon reviews of The Tehran Text follow, with sections excised to avoid too much repetition.

‘Playing mind games…’

The book opens in fine dramatic style, with an assassination and more than a hint of psychic powers which quickly dominate the story of Tana Standish and her action-packed adventures in the Middle East. The intricacies of the plot unfold in masterful manner and I don't want to put the book down as Standish wriggles out of one situation into another while playing mind games and trying to rescue her friends. – Amazon review, February, 2016

‘Not for the faint-hearted…’

… overall it was a fabulous and smartly paced read... Tana definitely leads an exciting life as a British agent extraordinaire, her psychic abilities making her even more successful than normal… The double life she leads under cover is not for the faint-hearted and it was a sad read when some of her locally based activist friends meet their grisly end. Spies and double agents abound in the novel, many with almost comparable psychic abilities to Tana, which make life very deadly at times for her and her fellow British agents. I certainly wouldn’t want to meet the Spetsnaz female agent Aksakov in real life but I am looking forward to reading more of the empathetic Yakunin… – Amazon UK, November 2015

‘Characters who are so alive…’

There are not too many books that stay with you long after you finish reading them, not too many characters who are so alive it seems like you recently met them. And so it is with Tana Standish, the psychic spy created by Nik Morton in this page-turning thriller.
            We travel to Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and England and meet a variety of brilliantly portrayed characters - both chillingly cruel and highly talented, some of them torturers, others who control a team of remote viewers, others traditional British MI6 characters. The locations are so finely drawn we can almost reach and touch them, the atmospheres so vivid that we can shut our eyes and sense ourselves there. - Maureen Moss, travel journalist, August 2010

‘Scary women in droves’
Nik Morton places the very fanciable Tana's missions for the British Intelligence Service in Iran in 1978 but his narrative and prose are nonetheless what we expect of espionage/thriller writers in the 21st Century. Male readers may find themselves enchanted by the lovely Tana, whom the author presents as very believable in his revelations from `deep throat' MI6 mole Alan Swann, but do bear in mind that she's probably drawing a civil service pension now so I would suggest that, like me, they forget the erotic fantasies. In any case, not only can Tana kick arse very well indeed, she's also psychic. Do you really want a relationship with an older woman who can not only read your thoughts but can also throw you around the room for having them?
            In addition to the nasty males running the Middle East terrorist groups, the book has scary women in droves, with deadly female Spetsnaz operative Aksakov out to abduct our Tana, whose assistance from Kazakhstan-based friendly psychic Yakunin is blunted by an unfriendly psychic in a strategic battle of the minds. But masterful Morton handles them all very nicely and serves up a ripping read with a plot clever enough to stand up with the best of them. - Review in Round Town News by author Danny Collins, May 2010

‘Compulsive spy novel’

For those who like their plots laid out skilfully and with painstaking research, Nik Morton's latest Tana Standish thriller, The Tehran Text is where you should be. When she knows her friends are in danger, Tana pits her physical skills against evil adversaries to secure their freedom. But because of Tana's phenomenal psychic ability, she is constantly under threat from the mind games of the Soviets. Although Tana has an ally in the Soviet camp, Yakunin, he cannot show his hand as he battles to warn Tana of the threats against her. While Tana pits her wits against the evil agents of the Shah's secret police, she is hounded by the brilliant, but deadly Spetsnaz agent, Aksakov… Tana Standish stands out as a heroine worthy of the pages of this compulsive spy novel. - Michael Parker, author, April 2010

‘Psychological gifts beyond the normal’

Thriller number two in the series of Tana Standish, English agent with psychological gifts beyond the normal. Many have read the book or seen the movie based on Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate. An eerie story about brainwashing of an American soldier during the Korean War days. Here, we have such a modern tale where Tana has the ability of the mind to see things at enormous distances... While she goes against an Islamic revolution and the old Ayatolla Komenih figures now and then, Tana's worst opponent is the female sadist and Spetsnaz agent Aksakov. - Review by Iwan Morelius in the Swedish online magazine LÄST OCH HÖRT I HÄNGMATTAN, translated, May 2010

My thanks to all of the above reviewers!

You can purchase The Tehran Text from any one of the international Amazon sites here

The Tehran Text - e-book published by Crooked Cat Publishing

The Blurb

The tense and explosive sequel to The Prague Papers

1978. Iran is in ferment and the British Intelligence Service wants Tana Standish’s assessment. It appears that CIA agents are painting too rosy a picture, perhaps because they’re colluding with the state torturers…

Allegiances and loyalties are strained as Tana’s mission becomes deadly and personal. Old friends are snatched, tortured and killed by SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. She has to use all her skills as a secret agent and psychic to stay one step ahead of the oppressors and traitors.

As the country stumbles towards the Islamic Revolution, the Shah’s grip on power weakens. There’s real concern for the MI6 listening post near the Afghan border. Only Tana Standish is available to investigate; yet it’s possible she could be walking into a trap, as the deadly female Spetsnaz fighter Aksakov has been sent to abduct Tana.

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, the sympathetic Yakunin, the psychic spy tracking Tana, is being sidelined by a killer psychic, capable of weakening Tana at the critical moment in combat with Aksakov. Can Yakunin save Tana without being discovered?

In the troubled streets of Iran’s ancient cities and amidst the frozen wastes on the Afghan border, Tana makes new friends and new enemies…

Worth reading twice!

Taking a few minutes off from writing to a couple of deadlines:

Today, just found a great 4-star Amazon UK review of The Tehran Text.

"I don't often read a book twice, and this one benefits from a second read as you can sort out the characters better and appreciate the quality of the writing. The book opens in fine dramatic style, with an assassination and more than a hint of psychic powers which quickly dominate the story of Tana Standish and her action-packed adventures in the middle east.

"The intricacies of the plot unfold in masterful manner and I don't want to put the book down as Standish wriggles out of one situation into another while playing mind games and trying to rescue her friends.

"I enjoyed the Foreword - an unusual and intriguing insight into the origin of the book..."

Thank you Jlbwye. It would be great to learn that a lot more people have read it once, let alone twice! I really appreciate this reviewer's dedication; a good review also appeared for The Prague Papers. Trouble is, I now have to get the next in the series finished - The Khyber Chronicle. As they say, every silver lining has a cloud, or something similar...

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00TLMK81Y?keywords=nik%20morton&qid=1455717020&ref_=sr_1_5&s=digital-text&sr=1-5

'... moving on to the rest of the world...'

In the light of this weekend’s terrible atrocities committed in Paris, I was drawn to some research I conducted a few years back.

When I was studying Iran for my thriller The Tehran Text, I was conscious of the time-frame in which the story would be set – 1978: the lead up to the Islamic Revolution from a British psychic spy’s perspective.

James Clavell wrote two interesting fast reads about that period – Whirlwind (1986) and its parallel love story novel Escape (1994). There were many other books I referenced, and one of them was Christopher de Bellaigue’s In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs (2004). Bellaigue was the Economist’s man in Tehran at the time of writing, and speaks fluent Farsi. He now lives in London with his wife Bita Ghezelayagh, who is an Iranian architect.

Like people the world over, Iranian men, women and children merely want to get on with their lives and are not particularly interested in the dogma of imams or religious leaders. However, one observation of a person in Bellaigue’s book tends to emphasize what most of us should know and fear: ‘The (Islamic) Revolution would start in Iran, before moving on to the rest of the world. Muslim countries would be first…’

These revolutionaries can bide their time, but that is their goal.

No dialogue, no compromise.

***

The Tehran Text published as an e-book by Crooked Cat Publications

 

 

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AMAZON COM books
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AMAZON UK books

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=nik%20morton

A dangerous place

There’s a lot of publicity over the fly-by activities of the Russian warplanes close to the UK. If a mistake is made, the consequences could be dire. The Cold War seems to be hotting up, to mix metaphors.

Yet little notice is taken of another Communist state despatching its warplanes in similar fashion – and risking conflict by default.

Several Japanese islands in the East China Sea are in dispute with China. And the Japanese air base at Naha, scramble on average more than once a day – and achieved a dubious record of more than 400 times last year.

Wikipedia commons

 

China outnumbers Japan almost eight-to-one in air force manpower and is building its capacity. Apparently, the Chinese pilots lack the training and experience of their Japanese counterparts, raising the risk of a near miss or collision. These fly-bys also imperil ties between these two economic giants.

When Major General Yasuhiko Suzuki was first posted as a fighter pilot to subtropical Naha in the 1990s it was a military backwater. Now the commanding officer, he says China’s assertiveness has made it Japan’s most important base.

Japan’s defences, particularly in the southwest islands, are being increased; they’re set to establish a new military observation unit on Yonaguni island, close to the contested islets.

Japan and China each claim ownership of the uninhabited islets - known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China - that are administered by Japan. This dispute has apparently affected Japanese investment in China. China says it has records of the islands going back about 600 years and that it administered them until it lost a war to Japan in 1895.

Japan sent aircraft to head off foreign military planes flying close to its airspace in excess of 740, heading for the highest annual total since the end of the Cold War. While dispatches against Russian aircraft are back down after an increase last year, sorties against Chinese aircraft, have continued to rise.

China is probably seeking to glean data through its fly-bys, a similar technique employed by the Russians in the West.  

Right now, the world is a dangerous place.

***

Read about the old Cold War in two explosive e-books featuring psychic spy Tana Standish, published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

THE PRAGUE PAPERS - Czechoslovakia, 1975

THE TEHRAN TEXT - Iran, 1978

Strong female protagonists-01

Do you like reading novels with strong female protagonists? Then try the Tana Standish psychic spy e-book series.

There couldn’t be a better time than now, as the first in the series, The Prague Papers is available at a special reduced price (for a limited period only!)

THE PRAGUE PAPERS

#1 in the Tana Standish psychic spy series

Reading this excellent novel is a bit like an extreme sport. The pages fly by at a pace… in this relentless flow of exciting action and carefully researched information which lasts right up to the climactic denouement—in itself, both satisfying and rewarding—because Nik Morton’s writing is very smooth and totally believable. The Prague Papers gave me that feeling of “being there myself”, rubbing shoulders with his characters, and for quite a while after finishing it, I found myself thinking about them and all they had been through.

– William Daysh, author of Over by Christmas

As well as creating memorable characters (Tana Standish will stay with me for a long time), Morton captures the essence of Prague and the Czech soul, educates us into the world of Eastern Bloc politics, and tells an intricate tale of espionage. As if this weren’t enough, he explores the fields of psychics and telepathy, adding intriguing depth to his story.

– Maureen Moss, editor and travel writer

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
 
THE TEHRAN TEXT
#2 in the Tana Standish psychic spy series

… Male readers may find themselves enchanted by the lovely Tana… not only can Tana kick arse very well indeed, she's also psychic. Do you really want a relationship with an older woman who can not only read your thoughts but can also throw you around the room for having them? In addition to the nasty males running the Middle East terrorist groups, the book has scary women in droves… But masterful Morton handles them all very nicely and serves up a ripping read with a plot clever enough to stand up with the best of them.

– Danny Collins, author of The Bloodiest Battles

Nik Morton has the ability to use a factual background whilst infiltrating dynamic, larger-than-life characters that deal with seemingly real situations with a devil-may-care attitude that makes the reader wonder what is fact and what is fiction. In the spy thriller genre, Morton is certainly emerging as a very convincing spine-chilling storyteller.
– Malcolm Smith, Costa Blanca News
 
There are not too many books that stay with you long after you finish reading them, not too many characters who are so alive it seems like you recently met them. And so it is with Tana Standish, the psychic spy in this page-turning thriller. We travel to Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and England and meet a variety of brilliantly portrayed characters – some of them torturers, others who control a team of remote viewers, others traditional British MI6 agents. The locations are so finely drawn we can almost reach and touch them, the atmosphere so vivid that we can shut our eyes and sense ourselves there.
– Maureen Moss, travel journalist

For those who like their plots laid out skilfully and with painstaking research, Nik Morton's latest Tana Standish thriller is where you should be… Morton's novel evokes memories of the dangerous period during which the Shah of Persia was removed from power and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. This is evil personified, and in amongst it, battling for her friends and her country, Tana Standish stands out as a heroine worthy of the pages of this compulsive spy novel.

– Michael Parker, author of The Boy from Berlin et al

THE PRAGUE PAPERS

Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

 

THE TEHRAN TEXT

Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

New friends, new enemies

As the e-book launch is scheduled for Tuesday, 17 February, please forgive me for posting this heads-up publicity

 

THE TEHRAN TEXT

 

 

 

The tense and explosive sequel to The Prague Papers

1978. 
Iran is in ferment and the British Intelligence Service wants Tana Standish’s assessment. It appears that CIA agents are painting too rosy a picture, perhaps because they’re colluding with the state torturers…

Allegiances and loyalties are strained as Tana’s mission becomes deadly and personal. Old friends are snatched, tortured and killed by SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. She has to use all her skills as a secret agent and psychic to stay one step ahead of the oppressors and traitors.

As the country stumbles towards the Islamic Revolution, the Shah’s grip on power weakens. There’s real concern for the MI6 listening post near the Afghan border. Only Tana Standish is available to investigate; yet it’s possible she could be walking into a trap, as the deadly female Spetsnaz fighter Aksakov has been sent to abduct Tana.

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, the sympathetic Yakunin, the psychic spy tracking Tana, is being sidelined by a killer psychic, capable of weakening Tana at the critical moment in combat with Aksakov. Can Yakunin save Tana without being discovered?

In the troubled streets of Iran’s ancient cities and amidst the frozen wastes on the Afghan border, Tana makes new friends and new enemies…

The Tana Standish Spy series:
1 – The Prague Papers
2 – The Tehran Text

3 - The Khyber Chronicle - coming soon!

Reviews for The Prague Papers

Morton's heroine Tana is made of stern stuff...
~ Michael Parker, author of The Devil’s Trinity and The Third Secret

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

… gave me that feeling of “being there myself”, rubbing shoulders with his characters, and for quite a while after finishing it, I found myself thinking about them and all they had been through.
~ William Daysh, author of Over by Christmas

As well as creating memorable characters, Morton captures the essence of Prague and the Czech soul, educates us into the world of Eastern Bloc politics, and tells an intricate tale of espionage...
~ Maureen Moss, Travel journalist

 

 

Please see my books from Amazon UK here

 

and from Amazon COM here

 

 

Writing on the wall

The Tehran Text takes place in 1978. It’s the second published account from the recently declassified secret files that relate to psychic spy Tana Standish. The first account was released as The Prague Papers.

Iran, 1978

Like many human ills, the seeds for Iran’s problems were sown a long time in the past. In this case, by Reza Khan Pahlevi, the general who made himself shah in 1925. His seed and son, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, lacked his father’s forcefulness and ability.

The father had instituted reforms opposed by the clergy, the ulama, but he failed to bring them under control; he attacked them and dominated them but never crushed them.

And the son fared even worse, since he failed even to dominate the ulama, thus earning their undying enmity, especially when he changed their ancient calendar three years before these events took place.

In 1951 the Iranian Nationalist Party, led by Muhammad Mussadegh, rose to power and soon marginalised the young shah, Mohammed, who had ruled under British auspices since 1941, when Tana Standish was four and living in Warsaw – indeed when all her family were still alive.

Tana’s adoptive mother, Vera, had given her plenty of history books to read – in several languages, so she didn’t just get the Anglo-centric version.

Vera Standish told me – a few days after her eighty-first birthday – that she believed history had lessons to teach, not least, to avoid the pitfalls of the past – “…though few British politicians seem willing to learn,” she argued over tea, “otherwise the Suez crisis wouldn’t have happened five years after Mussadegh took power.”

For decades, the British interests had been extensive in Iran, both to curb Russian expansion into the Gulf and the Indian Ocean and to protect the oil supplies, which happened to be managed by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.  Founded after the turn of the century, the English company was given a sixty-year monopoly. At the outset of the First World War, the British government purchased a big share of the company as it had a contract to supply the Royal Navy.

Mussadegh expropriated the oil company and in response to the lack of any compensation, we blockaded Iranian oil supplies. America approached Iran, suggesting it wasn’t really on the side of the old imperial powers, Britain and France, and at the same time our government naively asked America for support to regain their monopoly, suggesting Mussadegh was pro-Soviet.

 
Then in 1953 there were reports of a Soviet-Iranian loan and alliance, so a clandestine US-British operation was set up – and OSS veteran Kermit Roosevelt, a charming and resourceful man from the CIA, was given the responsibility for Operation Ajax. MI6 chose the rather more mundane but quite appropriate name for the plan – Operation Boot. A coup d’état was financed and organised, based on the CIA and MI6 intelligence assessments to the effect that there were powerful sections of popular opinion backed up by the army which favoured booting out Mussadegh. The CIA operatives worked from the bunker underneath the US embassy.
 
Incited by CIA dollars, mobs ran riot through Tehran, trampling several hundred people to death; anyone liable to oppose the prime minister’s removal was disposed of quietly.

So Mussadegh fell and his replacement – a Nazi sympathiser who’d been interned in Palestine by the British, no less – nationalised the company, the National Iranian Oil Company, forty per cent each going to the British and the US oil companies. In effect, the Shah was restored by the army – aided by the CIA.

Those were great days for the CIA, the kingmakers.

 
The MI6 contribution was conveniently forgotten; ‘C’, the head of the British SIS was happy to keep it that way.
 
In the years that followed, the Americans fostered good relations with the Shah and sold him weapons for oil, while the British government did the same, though with more restraint. After all, they guaranteed his future.
 
But those who had eyes to see could see the writing on the wall, and it wasn’t the words of Omar Khayyam.

* * *

 

The Tehran Text is published as an e-book by Crooked Cat Publishing on Tuesday, 17 February.

Order it from Amazon UK here

or from Amazon COM here

More details about Tana Standish can be gleaned from my blog here

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2014/11/secret-file-01-tana-standish-psychic-spy.html

Considerable detail about her traumatic childhood is revealed in The Prague Papers, too.

 

 

Amazon UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prague-Papers-Tana-Standish-ebook/dp/B00Q3GHEKE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1423743855&sr=1-1

 

Amazon COM

http://www.amazon.com/Prague-Papers-Tana-Standish-ebook/dp/B00Q3GHEKE/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1423743885&sr=1-3&keywords=nik+Morton

 

and also available from other online outlets