After 10 years of research and investigation, getting shot at in a Glaswegian underground car park, told England was no longer a safe place for me, after a further 10 years of writing and re-writing, sweating blood, cursing my own ignorance of the English language, and 7 bloody years of rejection, for the very first time, a British Literary Agent has offered to represent me, and find an editor and publisher for my book exposing the links between Margaret Thatcher and kickbacks from UK arms sales. He even sent me a Contract.
It is one of the very few times in my life I find myself laughing and crying at the same time. I am very humbled. And grateful to more people I have the good manners to recall - just now. Forgive me.
In case any of you have been living in a cave in the Antarctic, and you don't know what The Book is about, it goes something like this:
Ever since the Eighties, it has been a well-known secret that the-then British Conservative Government, led by Margaret Thatcher, was heavily involved in corruption surrounding international arms deals.
For all the talk of the Savoy Mafia, Denis and Mark Thatcher, Wafic Said, Mohammed al-Fayed (the father of Princess Di's last boyfriend, the one who died with her in the Paris tunnel) and backchannels, no-one could find the money trail leading from arms' kickbacks to the Conservatives, and more specifically, to Margaret Thatcher.
And that is because no-one could find the money launderer who constructed that money trail. Except me.
My book, Dead Men Don't Eat Lunch, chronicles my 10-year hunt for the truth about the money-launderer, the money trail and the pipeline of kickbacks which corrupted not only the Conservative Party and Government in the Eighties, but every British Government since then. Corruption which continues into the current UK LibCon Coalition Government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg.
The book is no dry recitation of facts. It is a rollercoaster ride through the dangerous and clandestine world of intelligence, arms sales and international intrigue. As I face down the CIA, meet with shady Israeli Intelligence officers, am shot at during a high-speed car chase in Glasgow, Scotland. And painstakingly uncover the money trail of arms' kickbacks leading eventually to Margaret Thatcher.
Robin Ramsay, one of Britain's leading Intelligence investigative journalists, says this of "Dead Men Don't Eat Lunch": '...the parade of the military-political characters from the Thatcher years, an almost palpable smell of the growing British arms industry in the period...kept me going...right to the end. The author may be correct and has uncovered a significant and hitherto unknown set of SIS [British Intelligence] ops in the Middle East in support of US policy in the 1980s.'
So. Why no luck with Literary Agents before now? Well. Thing is this. When she was alive, Maggie had a legal machine which was as formidable as ... well, I was trying to think of a good British sporting reference ... but do we have any British sports teams with good offenses any more?
Montenegro, Montegero, Montenegro ...
Anyways. You published so much as the recipe for the duck she had the previous evening, and you gots sued. So. Although quite a few UK Literary Agents liked The Book (back in 1996, and again in 2006), none would touch it with David Beckham's exfoliated underwear.
Now, however, Maggie is gone. And you can be pretty sure that her primary heir, Sir Mark Thatcher, won't be spending spoondocks on suing anyone. He wants all that lolly for himself. So, Literary Agents are nibbling.
Now, it's not a done deal yet. But I'd say I have a better chance of signing with a Literary Agent than a new Weaver Street Market has of being built in Fuquay-Varina. And an odds-on chance of having a book deal before there's a second WSM in Chapel Hill. Oops. Am I being tendentious again? Wash my mouth. Or write a book ...
*****
UPDATE: The interested Literary Agents all returned to me to tell me that the shadow of Thatcher is longer than we thought. No mainstream UK publisher will go near MT. So. It's back to self-publishing. However. I did take the opportunity to carve a smaller book out of Dead Men. One that focuses entirely on the MT aspect of Dead Men. I call this smaller, fast-paced page-turner Cast Iron: The Arms Trail To Margaret Thatcher. So. You now have a choice. Kitchen sink number = Dead Men. Thatcher-sepcific = Cast Iron. Happy trails. Geddit?! Trai ... oh, why do I bother?? Anyways, the new book has its own web-site, too.
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