Great choice of character name!

In today’s newspaper I’ve just read a very favourable review of Mike Herron’s newest MI5 spy novel, Real Tigers, third in the 'Slough House' series, hot on the heels of his earlier two outings, Dead Lions and Slow Horses. And he's also a fellow Geordie, no less...

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I read that one of their spies, who is kidnapped, is named Catherine Standish!  Now, this just shows what a great choice of name Mr Herron has selected.

Reminds me of my own psychic spy character, Tana Standish, whose first two adventures in the 1970s can be found in The Prague Papers and The Tehran Text. And he’s also used Catherine, which is the name of my heroine in the 'Avenging Cat' series, viz Catalyst, Catacomb and Cataclysm – and usually she’s called Cat, which is doubly appropriate, since the series is published by Crooked Cat Publishing!

Catherine Standish. Yes, it has a certain ring to it.

May be worth looking up the above. Certainly, Mr Herron has gained an enviable number of reviews and kudos.

November release - The Prague Papers

Due out in November from Crooked Cat Publishing, the first psychic spy Tana Standish thriller, set in the Cold War, which Mr Putin seems intend on bringing back...

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 British 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 was 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, concealed in a colliery in the Sumava Mountains. Unknown to her there’s a top secret psychic establishment in Kazakhstan, where Yakunin, one of their gifted psychics, has detected her presence in Czechoslovakia. As he gets to know her, his loyalties are strained.

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