A great new action heroine to be watched

A new 5-star review for the first documented  mission of Tana Standish, psychic spy. 

"Tana Standish, now 38, was an orphan Jewish girl trying to escape Warsaw by sneaking on a ship with her brother. Her brother is killed trying to find food on the ship. She was also caught later but before she is killed a British submarine torpedoes the ship. The survivors included the young girl. MI6 learns that she has psychic abilities, and when she grows up they train her as an espionage agent. She doesn’t really read minds, but receives impressions, and can detect danger, hostile and friendly elements, as well as pick up hidden names. She is also studying remote viewing in connection to her abilities.

"Mission Prague is not her first assignment, but it is the first published tale about this psychic spy...
 
"This is a brand new British espionage thriller set in the Cold War, and Tana Standish is a great new action heroine to be watched. 

"The novel is topnotch, though the author goes off on tangents a bit too much in order to tie the story and real people into real events. Still, if you are looking for a great new series, try this author out. 

"You’ll like Tana Standish, the psychic spy. Highly recommended."

Thank you, Virginia E. Johnson! 

Mission: Prague
Available from Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

 

'particularly superb...' and 'simply chilling...'

Here’s a review of the paperback Mission: Prague, the first in the Tana Standish series:

There’s a particularly nifty twist to this espionage adventure, set behind the Iron Curtain in the mid-1970s. The smart, sexy female protagonist isn’t just a rare survivor from Warsaw’s WW2 ghetto. Nor is she merely a highly skilled covert operative, brought up by the British military establishment to be extremely effective against the KGB and its cohort agencies when she’s behind enemy lines.

Nope, Tana Standish has one more thing going for her: psychic talents.

These attributes don’t make her an invulnerable or less-than-credible superwoman. They’re neatly underplayed, a talent which isn’t understood or entirely controllable but which frequently tips the odds in her favour.

This mild shift into the land of ‘maybe’ is carefully contrasted with the grim, grey reality of life in Czechoslovakia in the Seventies, brought to heel seven years earlier by Soviet tanks, its citizens stifled by the relentless brutal mechanisms of an efficient totalitarian regime. An underground resistance cell has been compromised; a British agent fled and the Czechs are scared. Tana is assigned to put the network back together and use her special talents to ascertain if comms have been compromised, or worse.

The result is a running chase through the back streets and sewers of Prague, where the protagonists barely taste their black bread and spicy sausage between violent and amorous encounters….

The best scenes are the one-on-one confrontations, claustrophobic closed room battles of expert second-guessing. One particular superb scene is beautifully choreographed and delivered, dragging the reader into the sweat-soaked reality of being stalked by a stronger killer… a simply chilling chapter, the best in the book, where Tana must marshal all of her mental strength to resist the worst (and it is very bad) that her opponents employ against her…

Mission: Prague is a rollicking read, an intriguing mix of action-adventure, actual events and augmented espionage.

Thank you, reviewer Rowena Hoseason!

Available from Amazon as an e-book or paperback: http://authl.it/B06XFY7LLV

Love on the doorstep

Forty-four years ago on a Friday (16 February, 1973), Jennifer, my wife-to-be appeared on my doorstep.

No, she wasn’t selling anything.

I was serving in the Royal Navy then and rented a room in a Gosport three-bedroom house owned by John Bevan, a civilian who worked at the Alverstoke Institute of Naval Medicine’s Royal Naval Physiological Laboratory (RNPL). At the time, he gained fame for the ‘deepest dive’. In March 1970 young laboratory scientists John Bevan and Peter Sharphouse made experimental dives in a pressure chamber, which proved that a man could survive in the sea for 10 hours at a depth equivalent to 1,535 ft. This was 300ft below what was believed to be the maximum at the time, described by American colleagues as ‘a hyperbaric moon landing’.

John’s girlfriend Brenda was a university friend of Jennifer’s. Before this weekend, Jennifer told Brenda she was at a loose end and Brenda invited her to stay at John’s house – there was room. Jennifer was teaching in Oxford.

The weekend arrived. In the lounge I’d been watching Rene Cutforth’s documentary about Czechoslovakia; I was doing research for a novel I planned to write some time in the future.

John was out when the doorbell rang and I answered it.

Standing on the doorstep were Brenda, who I knew, and Jennifer.

I was vaguely aware that my purple jumper had a hole in its shoulder seam. As we chatted, it transpired that we had a great deal in common. Jen had taken her degree in Newcastle upon Tyne University, and had digs in Whitley Bay. Those rooms were at the top end of Oxford Street – which happened to be the same street of my family home. We were not destined to meet then; I was usually at sea, or living in the south, in Hampshire. We discovered that we were both adopted. We liked similar books, movies and music, though both of us thereafter broadened our appreciation from each other’s interests. Surprisingly, she didn’t mind my sense of humour and puns! Oh, and the holey seam was eventually mended; true love will conquer all, it seams.

My heart wasn’t my own afterwards, either.

We got engaged six months later and were married a year to the day after first meeting on that doorstep.

Note:

Dedication in Mission: Prague (to be re-issued soon)

‘To Jennifer with love. Holey jumpers, this brings back memories of love at first sight, Rene Cutforth, Ma Vlast and all.’

A woman with a mission

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 Tana Standish psychic spy series

The first is The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975), 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 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 12 reviews of The Prague Papers follow, with sections excised to avoid too much repetition.

Reviews of The Prague Papers

By means of a first person Foreword and Afterword, author Nik Morton employs a nifty ruse to create the impression that his fast-paced spy novel is his rewritten version of a factual story passed to him in the bar of a hotel in Portsmouth, Hampshire, by British ex-agent Alan Swann. The ploy certainly gets matters off to a good start and sets the scene for this novel and a major spy mission into the Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia of 1975.

Enter Tana Standish, a wiry, attractive, all-action female version of James Bond. Once a five-year-old orphaned Polish Jewess adopted by a Royal Navy Lieutenant and his wife, she is not only very fit and lightning fast with her feet and hands—not to mention guns and the other tools of her trade—but she has psychic powers which enable her to see into the minds of her enemies (and friends), virtually regardless of where they are. This has to be the most useful tool a spy could have in her armoury and Tana puts hers to very good use.

… she is invited by her former lover and comrade, Laco Valchik, to return to Czechoslovakia to ‘repair and rebuild’ a spy cell they created in 1968. She’s also about to face some old enemies... Unbeknown to Tana, somewhere in Kazakhstan there are other ‘Psychics’ at work. Indeed, there is a secret psychic listening station there and one of the psychic operatives is inconveniently picking up some of the thoughts and emotions passing through Tana’s mind hundreds of miles away...

Reading this excellent novel is a bit like an extreme sport. The pages fly by at a pace… becoming engrossed 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 Morton’s writing is very smooth and totally believable. All-in-all, 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.

Far more than a ‘spy thriller’, this book will astound both lovers of that genre and those looking for a truly satisfying read. – Maureen Moss, editor and travel writer

I found myself in a world of double-dealing and intrigue at a level which made James Bond and Modesty Blaise look like rank amateurs... This Cold War espionage tale was fast moving and had more than one sting in it… This tale is a lively, well written espionage adventure with plenty of twists. – The New Coastal Press

… that’s the plot in a nutshell, but the skilful Mr. Morton does some entrancing work within that results in a gripping read that will enthral the reader to the last page. 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…. – Costa Blanca News, Danny Collins, author of The Bloodiest Battles

Welcome back to the Cold War…. Snatches of John le Carré, Len Deighton and Adam Hall are in effect sewn into the secret weave that runs like a latent thread through the pages of Nik Morton's spy adventure set in Eastern Europe… Morton's heroine, Tana is made of stern stuff and possesses a savant like ability to move out of her consciousness and into an ethereal plane... – Michael Parker, author of The Devil’s Trinity

… an exciting and well-constructed espionage thriller. I do not usually like these sort of books (I prefer horror stories) but I thought that this was an intelligent and nicely-paced story. Morton pays great attention to detail and he has created a memorable heroine with Tana Standish… The year is 1975 and Tana is sent on a special mission to Czechoslovakia … and this sets off an intriguing chain of events and some nail-biting set-pieces as Tana encounters Russian soldiers, ruthless assassins and sadistic torturers… There is plenty of (literally) thought-provoking material thrown in along the way making this an extremely entertaining read. Even if you do not normally like spy thrillers, The Prague Papers is well worth checking out. - Amazon UK, 2010

…Tana Standish… is a brilliant character, being a spy with amazing ability and deadly expertise to easily rival any top spy from previous literary works… the book is spell-binding with great depth and wonderful characters which is on par with any top spy novel, (or any thriller novel for that matter). Nik Morton (has) the ability to make you believe that you are in the story yourself, which is a rare thing. I can honestly say only a handful of novelists have that kind of skill…. – Amazon UK, 2011

… Tana Standish, a female ‘Bond’ is a wonderful, stylish character who carries the story through a roller coaster of chases, shootouts, and devious undercover operations. Highly trained and fearless, she also possesses a psychic ability that gives her an advantage but also places her in the crosshairs of enemies who track her from a secret base in Kazakhstan. The locations are detailed, as are the workings of the intelligence agencies, evidence surely of an in-depth knowledge and extensive research. The pace is full speed ahead and often the subject matter is brutal but I couldn’t look away and I certainly didn’t want to stop reading. If you enjoy Bond or Bourne then you will enjoy this, it just begs to be a movie.
            Well plotted and executed this is a story that held me enthralled and intrigued from the first page to the last...and then I read the epilogue, and I realised just how eye-opening this novel is... – Amazon UK, January 2015

… You are immediately immersed into the action. Ingenious switches of time and place present the back-story without disturbing the flow, and an exciting thriller with psychic undertones takes off. I could not put it down. – Amazon UK, March 2015

Thoroughly enjoyed this. The very opening chapter is a promise of intrigue and suspense. I wasn't disappointed. Good fast pace. Characters that are so vividly and craft-fully developed that I very much felt a part of their lives. I am now in the second of the series for another rollercoaster ride. – Amazon UK, August 2015

… 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.
            This mild shift into the land of ‘maybe’ is carefully contrasted with the grim, grey reality of life in Czechoslovakia in the Seventies, brought to heel seven years earlier by Soviet tanks, its citizens stifled by the relentless brutal mechanisms of an efficient totalitarian regime. An underground resistance cell has been compromised. Tana is assigned to put the network back together and use her special talents to ascertain if communications have been compromised, or worse.
            The result is a running chase through the back streets and sewers of Prague, where the protagonists barely taste their black bread and spicy sausage between violent and amorous encounters. This isn’t a slow-burn spy story a la Alan Furst where the tension builds over quiet encounters and long railway rides. Instead it’s more of a headlong hurtle through rapid liaisons and botched ops; there’s every opportunity for Tana to show off not just her psi skills but also her street savvy and close-quarters combat.
            For me, the best scenes are the one-on-one confrontations, claustrophobic closed room battles of expert second-guessing. There’s a superb fight sequence which takes place in a pitch-dark living room, where weaponless Tana must defend herself against an armed opponent using her memory, wits, senses and what falls to hand. It’s beautifully choreographed and delivered.
            The finale (is) preceded by a simply chilling chapter, the best in the book, where Tana must marshal all of her mental strength to resist the worst that her opponents employ against her. I also thoroughly enjoyed the scenes in the Soviet psychic investigations unit. Likewise, the author’s attention to detail in his descriptions of Prague, and Tana’s cracking back-story, were superb… In the main, The Prague Papers made for a rollicking read, an intriguing mix of action-adventure, actual events and augmented espionage. There are further Tana Standish novels in the pipeline, which takes place at other pivotal points in political history. I very much enjoyed the overlap in this one between ‘real’ and ‘fiction’... – Amazon UK, October 2015

This was a brilliant read from the exciting beginning right through to the end, the pace constant and the story of the young Tana Standish engrossing…. The story has many dark moments but the writing is sharp and crisp making the more gory bits not too awful for the reader who isn’t into serious pain and bloodshed. The locations are very well described – something I’ve noted with other novels that I’ve read by Nik Morton. His research seems faultless to me as an occasional reader of politically based spy thrillers. Tana is a woman with a mission; in part her drive having been moulded by her background which we glean just sufficiently to make it all believable... – Amazon UK, November 2015

My sincere thanks to all of the above reviewers!

Amazon UK here

Amazon Com here 

The Blurb:

Czechoslovakia, 1975. Tana is a spy - and she’s psychic. Orphaned in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, she was adopted by a naval officer and his wife. Now she works for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Czechoslovakia’s people are still kicking against the Soviet invasion. Tana is called in to restore morale and repair the underground network. But there’s a traitor at work.

And she learns about a secret Soviet complex in the Sumava Mountains. Unknown to her there’s a top secret establishment in Kazakhstan, where Yakunin, one of their gifted psychics, has detected her presence in Czechoslovakia.

When Tana infiltrates the Sumava complex, she’s captured! A desperate mission is mounted to either get her out or to silence her - before she breaks under interrogation.

Writing - serious about series

Fellow blogger and author Liz Harris recently posted her disenchantment with series books, prompted by Linwood Barclay’s novel Broken Promise (see her blog). She’s a fan of Barclay (I believe his writing style needs work, yet despite this he has the knack of drawing the reader in to keep turning the pages). But she was disappointed to find the book was the first in the Promise Falls series – some covers say this, some don’t, the latter being misleading, perhaps. Even so, Liz found the end of the book akin to ‘continued next book’ which can be deflating for a reader. Many readers, and Liz among them, want a resolution at the end of each novel. Yes, the series can present new challenges for the protagonists in later books, but some issue should be resolved in the current volume.

Series books by their nature are difficult to categorize for readers. For one thing, there are different kinds of series, all of them having their advocates.

Types of series

(not exhaustive)

1) Main character(s) engaged in solving crime/mystery/fighting common enemy. These are probably the most popular, because there is usually no continuity between books, yet they do supply the reader with familiar characters and environment. Police procedural and some historical books fall into this category. Ed McBain’s Precinct 87 and Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe, for example.

2) Main character(s) have intertwined stories to tell, which eventually define a resolution at the conclusion for all concerned. Nora Roberts is adept at these – quartets and trilogies, and even sometimes duets, relating to families (no pun intended).

3) Main character(s) in a dynasty/exotic location combat threats from outside, which can be warlike, business, personal or even supernatural. These can be interlinked sagas as penned by Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, et al.

4) Main character roams the land and becomes involved in murder, mystery or mayhem. Each tale is stand-alone; the character rarely changes through experience. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher and E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest Saga, for example.

Why read/write a series anyway?

Regular characters in a series have been around in genre fiction for decades, which proves the popularity of the concept. TV and film franchises benefit from series productions, again emphasizing the attractiveness to the audience.

Readers feel comfortable meeting again familiar characters who encounter variations on a theme – murder, mystery, etc.

Writers build up a ‘bible’ for their characters, which includes their past, the current situation, and often where they’re going. The writer is familiar with the characters. I don’t believe it’s lazy writing, because you still have to present obstacles for the protagonist, and these difficulties must be overcome according to the character’s known traits.

Will the series end?

Depending on the type of series, it’s possible that some readers will not tackle the first book in the series until they know the last one is published or imminent.  This hasn’t prevented The Game of Thrones books amassing a vast readership (before the TV series, in fact), or Archer’s ‘Clifton Chronicles’. Fans of popular authors will buy in, regardless. It’s tough for relative unknown authors to gain this readership until they’ve amassed several books in a series.

A finite series I’ve recently read is Night Hunter by Robert Faulcon (six books published between 1983 and 1987; all reviewed in this blog). It’s a supernatural quest series, with a resolution published three years after the penultimate book.

Certainly, you’d think that before the author could ‘sell’ the series idea to a publisher, they’d have some appreciation of the conclusion.  J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are in effect one novel in seven parts. I imagine the resolution was conceived at the outset, even if much of the glorious detail that runs throughout was not.

Of course, some series don’t need a final book, because they’re not a continuing saga but individual incidents in the main protagonist’s life (indeed, some characters don’t age though their authors do!) The character simply fades away – Charteris’ The Saint and Simon Brett’s Mrs Pargeter, to name two.

Series where the protagonist ages and evolves through his experiences are especially popular in crime fiction, because their back stories of family schisms affect the protagonist – Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks, for one; there are plenty of others.

I read all types of series and certainly don’t feel deprived if I haven’t reached ‘the end’. As in life, we enter other people’s lives, sometimes stay around, and at other times move away, not always consciously, but it happens. Art imitates life – so some stories will remain incomplete. I can live with that.

Having said as much, I do prefer to attain a resolution in the series books I write, though there always has to be an exception (see Floreskand below)!

The Avenging Cat series

Contemporary thrillers. Catherine Vibrissae has set herself the task of destroying the man who was responsible for her father’s death. To begin with, she sabotages his dubious business interests, but over time it seems to get more personal – on both sides. Each tale has a conclusion, though it promises more to come, for her vendetta is not complete.

#1 – Catalyst

#2 – Catacomb

#3 – Cataclysm

Work-in-progress - #4 – Cat’s Eye

The Tana Standish psychic spy series

Set in the 1970s/1980s, this features Tana Standish, a psychic British secret agent, who as a child survived the Warsaw ghetto of 1942.  Her credo is simple: fight evil. Unfortunately, she soon learns that the Soviets have a special secret unit in Kazakhstan that is employing psychics to spy on the West, and they have targeted her as well…

#1 – The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975)

#2 – The Tehran Text (Iran, 1978/1979)

Work-in-progress - #3 – The Khyber Chronicle (Afghanistan, 1979/1980)

The Chronicles of Floreskand

‘by Morton Faulkner’

Co-written with Gordon Faulkner, the creator of mythical Floreskand, this series spans a fantasy continent that has been evolving for forty years. These stories have resolutions at the end, yet a great deal is left hovering for later books, with recurring characters and unintended consequences from earlier events.

#1 – Wings of the Overlord

#2 – To Be King

Work-in-progress - #3 – Madurava

Love them or loathe them, series books will be around for a long time yet. Long may that be so!

To play fair with the reader, however, publishers should make it clear that a book is part of a series.