Traitor’s Game
Soldier Spy Book One
by Rosemary Hayes
‘Right from page one you know you are in the hands of a talented storyteller… An exciting tale of espionage and adventure in the classic mould.’
~ R.N. Morris, author of The Gentle Axe
1808.
Captain Will Fraser has just returned from the Front in the Peninsular War. He is disgraced and penniless, the victim of a conspiracy led by a jealous and influential officer. Fraser has been falsely accused of insubordination and cowardice and dismissed from his regiment.
Fraser and Duncan Armstrong, his wounded Sergeant, arrive in London to seek out Will’s brother, Jack, who works for King George’s Government.
But Jack has disappeared. He vanished from his lodgings a week ago and no one has seen him since. Friends and colleagues are baffled by his disappearance as is the young woman, Clara, who claims to be his wife.
Then Will is viciously attacked, seemingly mistaken for his brother, and only just escapes with his life. When news of this reaches Jack’s colleagues in Government, Will is recruited to find his brother and he and Armstrong set out to follow a trail littered with half-truths and misinformation.
For their task is not quite what it seems.
Will closely resembles his brother and it becomes evident that he is being used as a decoy to flush out Jack’s enemies. These are enemies of the State, for Jack Fraser is a spy and his colleagues believe he has uncovered evidence which will lead to the identity of a French spymaster embedded in the British Government.
Will’s search leads him to France but in this murky world of espionage, nothing is straightforward.
The soldier turned spy must unmask a traitor, before it’s too late.
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Guest Post
When I was asked to write a series of novellas set during the Napoleonic Wars, I knew I would find it a daunting task but what particularly interested me was the secret war against Napoleon. That underbelly of every war where agents pass information to their handlers through secret channels, where things are not always what they seem, where the most unlikely people turn out to be working for the enemy. So, the work of spies is the main focus of my stories.
Although there was high level espionage, there were also many ordinary French citizens, including fishing families, shopkeepers and others who wished to undermine Napoleon’s rule. They were working for the British and provided shelter for British spies – and girls and women often dressed as men to avoid detection. There was a respected French priest (with a beautiful mistress) who was an agent for the British – and a schoolmaster on the Normandy coast who passed on French naval signals to the British so that their ships would be let through as French.
Then there were those who regularly crossed the Channel, legally, spying for their country’s enemies in plain sight. And, of course, there were double agents, too, one of whom is the mysterious traitor mentioned in my story.
The ‘Soldier Spy’ stories are historical fiction but real people appear in them – the head of the Alien Office, a Jersey fisherman, a Catholic priest and a renowned codebreaker, among others.
In the first of these stories, ‘Traitor’s Game’, my main protagonist, Captain Will Fraser, is sent home from the Peninsular War in disgrace, wrongly accused of insubordination and cowardice. In London he seeks out his brother, Jack, only to find that Jack has vanished and, in order to find him, Will reluctantly becomes entangled in the murky world of espionage.
Can he track down a double agent before more secrets are passed to the enemy and a murder is committed?
About the Author
Rosemary Hayes has written over fifty books for children and young adults. She writes in different genres, from edgy teenage fiction (The Mark), historical fiction (The Blue Eyed Aborigine and Forgotten Footprints), middle grade fantasy (Loose Connections, The Stonekeeper’s Child and Break Out) to chapter books for early readers and texts for picture books. Many of her books have won or been shortlisted for awards and several have been translated into different languages.
Rosemary has travelled widely but now lives in South Cambridgeshire. She has a background in publishing, having worked for Cambridge University Press before setting up her own company Anglia Young Books which she ran for some years. She has been a reader for a well-known authors’ advisory service and runs creative writing workshops for both children and adults.
Rosemary has now turned her hand to adult fiction and her historical novel ‘The King’s Command’ is about the terror and tragedy suffered by a French Huguenot family during the reign of Louis XIV.
And Traitor’s Game, the first book in the Soldier Spy trilogy, set during the Napoleonic Wars, has recently been published.
Author Links:
Website: www.rosemaryhayes.co.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HayesRosemary
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rosemary-Hayes/e/B00NAPAPZC
