
A worthy addition to the noble company of my ‘IN’ Crowd.
#blackmirror #beyondthesea
A worthy addition to the noble company of my ‘IN’ Crowd.
#blackmirror #beyondthesea
Just in time for Halloween, the time of year when Like Dolphins begins. I’ve given the latest novel the soundtrack Spotify playlist treatment, following in the footsteps of the same for dadless and The Glimmer Girl.
I’ll try and steer clear of landline spoilers as I go through the featured tracks and artists. The mood captures the late ‘89 period and many of the bands and songs occupy the air space of our spies, Breakspear and Kestrel, on their hedonistic journey from London, to Amsterdam, and East Berlin.
Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones
Just as David Bowie did on the dadless selection, maybe prevalent due to his status as the Patron Saint of Outsiders, Jagger and Co. recur on Like Dolphins symbolic the spy noir of this story.
The Stones always shot from the hip, ignoring the considerations of head and heart, theirs or anyone else’s for that matter. Visceral and instinctive. Earth bound and after dark.
The mythology of the Stones musical creed, the Southern Blues, concerns a needful man and a meeting at the crossroads; the nether place where destinies meet and paths diverge. The place where The Man Downstairs (more on him later) awaits the live-drop of a needful soul traded in return for musical talent and earthly fame. Much like an agent and handler in the murky world of espionage.
The song Gimme Shelter presents the band both lyrically and musically at their most foreboding and brilliant, telling with granite certainty of the darkness rolling in and all that comes with it, in Like Dolphins’ case, a trio of spies converging in winter mists of Highgate Cemetery, 1989.
Voodoo Ray – Tall Paul/ A Guy Called Gerald
Uplift. The game is afoot for the BARBELL spies, Breakspear and Kestrel.
Gerald’s club classic, presented here by superstar DJ Tall Paul, is laser light on lyrics but super massive on vibe. The unidentifiable sound sources and soulful voice still e-vokes the dry ice, strobe lights, and chemical haze of early rave culture, even on the radio! Much the same as Gerald’s associated band below.
Pacific State – 808 State
Oceanic jungle sounds, beats, electronica and that clarion horn phrase framed the memory of an era for all seasons, as a decade fell away, the Cold War reached its climax and the 90s beckoned for those that survived.
Key fact: the band took their numeric name from the Roland 808 drum machine, its beats and loops a fixture of the time and I chose Shev, the Glimmer girl’s code number 808 as a dual nod to both Ian Fleming and this seminal Manchester band, 808 State
Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles
Day must follow night (spoiler alert: until the end of the world) and clear skies after the storm, represented here by the anti-Stones Fab Four. How better to great the first rays of sun, with love warmth and pre-come down positivity as the last track at a Dutch forest rave in winter?
I Wanna Be Your Dog – The Stooges
A getaway tune, for a getaway van? Maybe I’ve told you too much.
Trans-Europa Express – Kraftwerk
Roaring along the autobahn the walled island city lies ahead. The song that pledges much of the gleaming modern West Berlin, even social possibilities involving Berliner former Stooge, Iggy Pop and his thin white keyboard player, Mr Jones.
Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones
The amorality of espionage brings the Stones back to our ears once more, now putting the case for the defence of The Man Downstairs, he of many names, wealth and taste. A delicious build to the closing statement which reveals it’s not Mr Brownstone in the dock but the person in the mirror.
Ride On Time – Black Box
Omniscient sonic wallpaper, Italian house music which sets the scene, fronted by a beautiful miming model, as with our story, things are not quite how they seem.
I Can’t Get No (satisfaction) – The Rolling Stones
On the radio programme Desert Island Discs British Prime Mrs Thatcher reminisced about hearing the instrumental Telstar on the kitchen wireless with it’s gleaming promise of a white hot future.
The`Stones’ last appearance in this soundtrack takes place in another country, another time, another kitchen and an altogether different outcome.
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
Optimism and tragedy are conjoined in this track, the band that perform it and it’s place in relation to Like Dolphins.
Heroes – David Bowie
Of course. The opening line of the single version. Berlin. An optimum performance by an optimum artist and band (Fripp, Eno, Alomar, Murray, Davis, Visconti).
The songs scoring romance; glamour and love in the face of adversity and oppression. The psychology of the Stasi regime and its overbearing physical manifestation; its guns, it’s guards and the impregnable, unscalable Wall.
In the face of all this, ‘We could be us, just for one day.’
A companion piece for the Like Dolphins novel for both music and book lovers to enjoy on the link below. I hope you do so.
Onyx out.
The third in the BARBELL series is a Cold War novel, probably my first and last to centre on that stalwart era of spy-fiction. Off road as always, the backdrops so far have been World War One with Shamstone, the Irish Tan and Civil Wars and our near-future tech-spionage in The Glimmer Girl.
For me every book is an exercise or test. With Shamstone the exercise was to use a first person narrative and weave him through the historic events as a spy from 1914 to the Great War’s conclusion.
With The Glimmer Girl it was to marry the origins and destiny of SIS with our cutting edge millennial protagonist, Shev, at one end and Commander Smith Cumming in the early 1920s at the other, to converge at one cataclysmic moment in the future.
Now in Like Dolphins it was to place my existing characters of BREAKSPEAR (Bradley) and KESTREL (Wallace) in the last knockings of the Cold War, right at the end, in a plot like no other.
The tag lines “Withnail and Spy” and “ A Cold War Trainspotting” set the scene of late 80s culture, music, style, the end of football hooliganism, the rising rave scene.
We’re at a critical point in the Cold War with an ailing GDR behind the Wall further de-stabled by reforming winds of Glasnost and Perestroika coming from the senior partner, the USSR. Add to that action in the hedonistic capital of Europe, Amsterdam.
As for the title, you’re probably finding I need several reasons to do anything. Although the months of research have revealed a global scenario re the Cold War, historically it always came down to Berlin to me, and Berlin equalled Bowie and those magical albums, Low, Heroes and Lodger.
So you need to check out the first line from the most Berlinesque song, Heroes. Then there’s Jamie Wallace’s porpoise like perma-smile and finally their handler’s name, Dauphin, which is French for dolphin with other connotations regarding royal succession. I can’t give too much away!
In my cover design there are big unashamed nods to the design genius Mr Raymond Hawkey’s first Deighton covers, beginning with the IPCRESS File’s monochrome bullets and the holes from his Pan paperback of Fleming’s Thunderball.
Despite the noted homage to a master I hope there’s enough originality that makes the cover its own along with the other covers in the series.
I’ve spotlighted Like Dolphin’s touch points in the same way as I did with the previous novels: The ‘O’ in the Dolphins text is the tsuba hand guard for a samurai sword that features in the story. Tulip petals, Amsterdam’s canal, ballistic material, chemicals and a ticket for the game our men will be attending, Dynamo Berlin vs. Monaco. On the back is a GRU badge and the katsumushi dragonfly.
As for the apocalyptic polaroids, are things ever what they seem in the BARBELL series? Come back to me when you finished the book, tomorrow!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B7C93N5Y/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2
This week we are showcasing another of our archive collections – The Arthur Dooley Archive. The two images chosen this week show one of Dooley’s most…
Photo Friday: Four Lads Who Shook the World
Article by David Craggs In October 2016, this sexagenarian espionage aficionado waxed lyrical about Fleming’s legacy and the door he opened for …
Ian Fleming’s Literary Legacy – The Spy Fantasy
I recently had a blast on Shane Whaley’s Spybrary podcast (don’t you dig his nifty nod to Dr No with the graphics?) guesting on the Dead Drop Five feature.
It’s a kind of Desert Island Discs for spy fans, we discuss books, films, TV and movies- the whole shooting match!
I’m told my choices were a little ‘off road‘. Give it a listen, see what you think-
Spybrary is back in full effect, thank goodness. I’m honoured that they’ve aired my Brush Pass Review of this little known and highly influential belter from 1908.
I read it on my hols over the summer. When they ask you your name at Starbucks in Paris and you say, ‘Thursday.’ Priceless.
Anyway, do tune in and subscribe. Hope you enjoy it.
Onyx Out. X
I was a guest on the @SpyHards podcast this week!
Sit in on the debrief as we put Costner’s ‘87 Cold War spy flick ‘No Way Out’ under the arc-light.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/spyhards-podcast/id1526729282?i=1000532924734
The novel has cultural pointers-a-plenty in amongst the espionage. Some are staples of an escapist spy story such as travelogue and style but music plays a key part.
Below I reveal the background of some of the tunes I selected to match the taste and listening of various characters and scenes within the novel.
For Shev, The GLIMMER Girl herself, it’s the urban cutting edge of Green Tea Peng’s Hu Man, and Sampa the Great’s Final Flow.
The Specials’ Gangsters for the scene in SIS Chief Admiral Dewhurst’s office.
It’s the Small Faces’ Tin Soldier and Bowie’s Wild is the Wind for veteran spy, St John Bradley.
Scenes such as Commander Smith-Cummings dash through a tempest at the novel’s prologue are represented by folk of Catherine Tickell and The Darkening.
Evocative pieces by Cara Dillon and Fay Hield embellish the novel’s Celtic folklore elements set in 1920s Ireland with Stick in the Wheel’s Villon Song representing the murderous Jonah Spirewick.
Modern Icelandic scenes are covered by A Man Called Adam’s Mountains and Waterfalls and the Easter egg inclusion of Terry Callier’s Lazarus Man…
Along with the epic (when isn’t she) and spy flick-esque Time Out of the World from Goldfrapp.
This feast for the ears listenable on the Spotify link 👇🏼
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VUGCbqbf1NMXEYMsC13M5?si=i_4046F5Sn-rJzGWapSwzw
Thanks for reading AND enjoy the trip.
Thanks to @spybrary podcast’s FB page for posting this image.
The escapism of #TheGlimmerGirl is honoured to sit alongside this work of ‘real’ espionage: Dr Kate Vigur’s Mission France.
I’ve always the bravery and sacrifice of (then young) women of the Special Operations Executive to be the pinnacle of THE pinnacle. 🪂 alone, in the dead of night, into Nazi occupied Europe.
So few remain now to parade alongside our SF veterans each year on Remembrance Sunday, a section due to more recent service, that is not televised.
It’s marvellous that this beautifully wrapped account, Mission France, is shining a light in these unknown heroines of WW2 once again.