Cover Stories

by Robert J. Rosenblum

From Athens to Washington and back to Greece winds a labyrinth of intrigue in which two former enemies-an American and a Russian- join forces against the agencies they once supported. The two men- and one woman- risk their fortune and their lives in a scheme dotted by death and shadowed by the fact that even the inventors of the cover stories don't know which ones are real.Harry Nial left the CIA in large part because of what it had done to Chrisi, the beautiful young Greek woman he loved. He became a charter boat captain sailing the Greek islands. But hi is in Washington, broke and boatless, when he is offered a job by a splinter intelligence Go back to Greece to buy a KGB agent's defection with a million dollars as bait.The mission seems easy until he meets the Russian. And then it turns out to be impossible. yet with a million dollars at stake and two professionals to collaborate, why not turn to invention?

374 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

This is actually AUTObiography, since I'm writing it for myself...and I think the important date to start with is my birth not simply as a human being, but as a writer. Except for the fact that I can remember being 9 years old, and home sick from school, and for some reason deciding that I might try to write a book (my father's typewriter was handy, and I put a piece of paper into the roller and wrote "The man sat in the corner of the room"...and couldn't think of what came next). I next began to try to write when I went to live in England in 1968. I was at the time eking out a living as a song-writer, and this had led to an opportunity to go to England with my song-writing collaborator, supposedly to write a musical for the English theater...but we arrived to find the offered opportunity was a mirage, and there we languished until almost out of money. Perhaps because I had found an inexpensive cottage to rent in the lovely countryside just north of London, and England itself is a place where the literary tradition flourishes-encouraged by creative people starving in lovely countryside cottages--I decided to try writing a book. No, I didn't continue from that first sentence written twenty years earlier. I did know, however, that the books which had the best chance of interesting a publisher generally contained some action and mystery. So I wrote an espionage novel. I sent it to an editor in the States whom I knew...and back came a contract (for an advance of $1,500) in the mail. Paltry as that was, it was sufficient to survive several more months in England, and I never thought to negotiate. But I was off and running. My wife and I lived in England for a total of almost 8 years, by which time the literary tradition had sunk in enough--my fourth book was going to be published in the U.S.--that I felt I could continue to make a living at writing. We returned to New York just in time to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and have lived there ever since. For anyone interested enough in my work to have read this much of my biography, I think it's time to reveal that along with publishing under my own name, I have published fiction in several very different genres, under seven different pseudonyms, and in 19 different languages worldwide. My pseudonyms are:

Nicholas Conde, written with Robert Nathan, 3 books, two of which were made into films: "The Believers" and for TV "Into the Deep Woods";
Johanna Kingley, author of 5 books, 3 of which were NYTimes best-sellers; published in 19 languages;
Jessica March, author of 5 mass-market best-sellers; published in 19 languages;
Jean Day Lord, David Locke, Robert Maxxe, and Anjelica Moon, pseudonyms, with one book each in a different genre.

Some of these books are out-of-print now, but will soon be available online--with my author byline.

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[Robert Rosenblum]

Planning to be made available for eBook readers.