One of the key early scenes in my novel "The Secret Fire" is a 1936 auction at Sotheby's in London of a vast collection of unpublished manuscripts by Sir Isaac Newton, many of them focusing on two topics Newton preferred to keep secret during his lifetime: his unorthodox religious views, and his extensive research into alchemy. [UPDATE: I see Dan Brown refers to these papers too, in his new novel "The Lost Symbol".]

In "The Secret Fire," the auction leads to a grisly end for a hapless...

Folk knowledge and old secrets, often garbled and no longer understood, can sometimes still be found in such apparently innocent repositories as fairy tales and children's songs. 

In "The Secret Fire", the song 'Oranges and Lemons', its true meaning long forgotten, is said by the novel's main villain, Isambard, to encode a great London secret – the location of the mighty artery of power that is the city's main ley line.

(View the London or "St Paul's" ley line on a map)

Beyond the short version of

One of the key early scenes in "The Secret Fire" is a 1936 auction at Sotheby's in London of a vast collection of unpublished manuscripts by Sir Isaac Newton, many of them focusing on two topics Newton preferred to keep secret during his lifetime: his unorthodox religious views, and his extensive research into alchemy.

The auction leads to a grisly end for a hapless bookseller's agent, who by buying one of the Newton papers for the British secret service makes himself the target of a Nazi agent c

One of the key early scenes in "The Secret Fire" is a 1936 auction at Sotheby's in London of a vast collection of unpublished manuscripts by Sir Isaac Newton, many of them focusing on two topics Newton preferred to keep secret during his lifetime: his unorthodox religious views, and his extensive research into alchemy.

The auction leads to a grisly end for a hapless bookseller's agent, who by buying one of the Newton papers for the British secret service makes himself the target of a Nazi agent c

The June 30, 1944 V-1 flying bomb explosion at Aldwych in London is one of the core events in my second novel, The Secret Fire.

With the 65th anniversary of the attack coming up this week, I've dipped into my research archives and scanned a couple of new images related to the blast.

The first is a formerly secret sketch of the explosion site, showing the precise location where the bomb fell, between Bush House and Adastral House, as it was then known, just east of Kingsway. If you stand in the Ald

 (This article first appeared on Penguin UK’s Most Wanted crime/thriller website in March 2009.)

I listened, spellbound. It had been nearly 64 years since wartime secret agent Pearl Cornioley’s parachute jump into Nazi-occupied France, but her recollection of that night in September 1943 held me mesmerized.
 
“It was a static line, and consequently as I dropped I could feel the little bits of string cracking. Pop, pop … pop, pop, pop, until finally I felt the shock of the parachute opening itself …

This just in:  Thrilled and honoured to see the Penguin Most Wanted crime fiction website is listing The Secret Fire as their #2 best-selling crime/thriller/mystery novel at the moment, with a very nice additional “If you like this …” box saying “If you like John Twelve Hawks, you’ll like Martin Langfield”. Thank you Penguin/Michael Joseph!

The Secret Fire is my second novel, and like the first is an unusual thriller tinged with supernatural themes.  A story of love, betrayal and forgiveness set

The Secret Fire is my second novel, and like the first is an unusual thriller tinged with supernatural themes.  A story of love, betrayal and forgiveness set in London and Paris during the present day and World War Two, it is a prequel and sequel to my debut novel The Malice Box, which was first published by Penguin UK/Michael Joseph in the UK in 2007.

The Secret Fire came out on April 16, 2009.  This website provides links, for those who are interested, to further reading and sources on the book

The Secret Fire is my second novel, and like the first is an unusual thriller tinged with supernatural themes.  A story of love, betrayal and forgiveness set in London and Paris during the present day and World War Two, it is a prequel and sequel to my debut novel The Malice Box, which was first published by Penguin UK/Michael Joseph in the UK in 2007.

The Secret Fire came out on April 16, 2009.  This website provides links, for those who are interested, to further reading and sources on the book