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Topaz

The Topaz Files, Book 1

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Topaz

By: Richard Robinson
Narrated by: Vince McLoughlin
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About this listen

It’s the summer of 1995. The US Peace Envoy, Fred Martinson, begins to broker a peace deal for Northern Ireland. The world holds its breath as the first tentative steps are taken. Jones, an 18-year-old from suburban England, has stumbled through education and yearns to be a football reporter.

He is offered a place at Milton College, a former secretarial school with a clandestine partnership with GCHQ in seeking the communication stars of the future.

Before he knows it, Jones has been recruited, paired with Jenny Richmond, who is every bit his equal, and sent to Northern Ireland to undertake skills development and resilience testing with the Young Communicators Unit (YCU).

Training becomes a matter of life and death when a group of trainee spies learning on the job are betrayed to their death, and their most promising member, Isadora Brown, is taken hostage. MI5 and YCU are sent a video of her reading demands by a mysterious organisation called Red Line.

What if a group of young trainees were forced onto the frontline to deal with one of the most sensitive issues in UK history? What if political relations were so sensitive at the end of The Cold War, that only a group of deniable students could change history and keep super powers from ruining the first steps of a peace deal in Northern Ireland?

It’s a race against the clock to find and free Isadora, and make sure the US peace talks aren’t sent up in flames.

But who, exactly, is betraying who?

©2023 Richard Robinson (P)2023 Richard Robinson
Crime Fiction Espionage Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense
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I enjoyed listening to the first story in this spy thriller series. Ok, it was far-fetched in parts, (but it has to be to be entertaining, right?). At other times the almost forensic detail suggests the author has first hand knowledge of the subject, so who knows? Anyway, it's a good yarn and has touches of humour to balance the tension. Vince McLoughlin's narration is perfect. He keeps the story rolling and has an impressive array of accents that bring the characters to life. Recommended!

Tense thriller with a spy-school twist

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