A Very British Ending

A gripping espionage thriller about an establishment plot to take control of 1970s Britain, by a writer who is ’poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carre’

’The thinking person’s John le Carré’ Tribune

’Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré’ Irish Independent

’More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers’ Publishers Weekly

An MI6 officer, haunted by the ghosts of an SS atrocity, kills a Nazi war criminal in the ruins of a U-boat bunker. The German turns out to be a CIA asset being rat-lined to South America.

As a hungry Britain freezes in the winter of 1947, a young cabinet minister negotiates a deal with Moscow trading Rolls-Royce jet engines for cattle fodder and wood. Both have made powerful enemies with long memories. The fates of the two men become entwined as one rises through MI6 and the other to Downing Street.

And as Britain stumbles into the mid-1970s, a coup d’etat is imminent.

A Very British Endingis the Wolf Hall of power games in modern Britain. Senior MI6 officers, Catesby and Bone, try to outwit a cabal of plotters trying to overthrow the Prime Minister. The author once again reveals the dark underside of the Secret State on both sides of the Atlantic.

’A fantastic read’ Culture Matters

’The best espionage story you’ll read this year or any other’ Crime Review

Praise for Edward Wilson:

’Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader’s attention’ W.G. Sebald

’A reader is really privileged to come across something like this’ Alan Sillitoe

’All too often, amid the glitzy gadgetry of the spy thriller, all the fast cars and sexual adventures, we lose sight of the essential seriousness of what is at stake. John le Carré reminds us, often, and so does Edward Wilson’ Independent

Edward Wilson served in Vietnam as an officer in the 5th Special Forces. His decorations include the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medal for Valor. Soon after leaving the army, Wilson became a permanent expatriate and he formally lost US nationality in 1986 to become British. For the past thirty years he has been a teacher in Suffolk, where he lives.