Ted Allbeury Books In Order

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Ted Allbeury was is one of England’s best espionage thriller writers of the twentieth century. Born in Stockport, Cheshire, he served in British intelligence as a Special Operations Executive and was the only secret agent to parachute into Germany during World War II, and live behind enemy lines until the allies landed. Allbeury had a pretty eventful; life having lost his father days before the 1918-Armistice of World War I. His mother had moved the family to Birmingham where he went to King Edward’s Grammar school, and became a draftsman and later designer in an iron foundry. It was during this time that he also taught himself German and French. When World War II broke out he tried to join the RAF but was rejected, prosecuted, and fined for trying to leave a reserved occupation. But he was not deterred and soon applied for a linguist job with the army that he spotted in a newspaper advertisement.

What Allbeury thought was a linguist job turned out to be an intelligence job, a job in army intelligence. He was so good that the army paid his fine and lied that he was a laborer on his application. Between 1940 and 1947 he served with the Special Operations Executive as an undercover agent in Germany, Italy, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. After serving as a senior intelligence officer in Nazi Germany before the allied invasion, he became a chief agent during the Cold War. He ran agents across the Iron Curtain and was at one time captured and nailed to a kitchen table by the Russians. Soon after leaving the intelligence world he got involved in advertising and sales management. He was so successful that he at one time was Walter George’s creative director before he stated W.J. Southcombe, his own agency that he ran for five years. After a brief hiatus as an Alsatian fog breeder and chicken farmer he was back into advertising founding Allbeury, Coombs & Partners, a marketing and public relations firm. Over the years he had become an excellent photographer and copywriter and used this as a lifeline in case his novels flopped. Other jobs he has held over the years included managing a pirate radio station known as King Radio that he made an instant success. The kidnapping of his daughter in 1970 was a major turning point in his life that paved the way for his becoming an author.

Ted Allbeury did not start writing until he was 55 years old when he wrote his first novel “A Choice of Enemies” in 1973. He was not one of your typical authors that had always wanted to become a writer right from the cradle. He was suddenly inspired by the kidnapping of his daughter who went missing for four years. It was during those days of depression, despair, and lethargy that he wrote his first novel. Combining his despair and experiences as a secret agent in Nazi Germany, he penned four chapters of his first novel and got a phone call from an agent who had been shown the chapters by a friend of his. Within a few days he had sold the manuscript to St Martin’s Press and has never looked back since. Since then, he has penned more than thirty novels, a number of serials, and radio plays for the BBC, and several short stories under his real name and the pen names Patrick Kelly and Richard Butler. He loves writing about people, mostly about their relationships and problems, and the way these characters work out their destinies. The movie “Hostage” that came out in 1982 is based on Ted’s novel “No Place to Hide” while Blue Ice the 1992 film is inspired by many of Ted’s characters. Several of his novels such as “Deep Purple” and “Lonely Margins” among others have been serialized by the BBC.

While many successive generations of espionage thriller writers were for the most part a reaction against earlier authors, Ted decided to make his work an extension of other writers. For the most part, his novels are an extension of the style and themes of the works of Len Deighton, who focuses on spying ethics. His work thus tends to be insightful wartime thrillers peopled with human beings as enemy agents, thus exposing the power relationships that inform both sides. His very first novels were inspired by his love for the hard-nosed American thriller, which he spiced up with his experiences and humanity in developing a tangled web of World War II and Cold War stories. For instance, his 1974 novel “Snowball” has his agent Tad Anders investigating some propaganda from the Soviets that fabricated evidence showing that the Americans were in collusion with Adolf Hitler. In “The Lantern Network” which is deemed on of his best historicals he analyzes the reasons for the winding up the “French Resistance”. Most of the detailed information that Ted provides in his novels comes from the fact that he had connections to the higher ups that provided him with top secret information. For instance, he had access to a Soviet network handler known as Andrei Aarons, who could access up to five top presidents in the US and Europe. His later novels such as “The Reckoning” and “The Line Crosser” were more similar to the Somerset Maugham novels in asking important yet uncomplicated questions such as; who does an agent serve? And to whom does his loyalty belong?

“The Lantern Network” is an excellent thriller novel that opens to a Special Branch investigation into an anonymous and solitary factory that belongs to a man suspected to have links to the Russian KGB. But the man throws a spanner into the works when he commits suicide for no apparent reason leaving Commander Bailey frustrated. The second part of the novel is about the undercover work of an agent working with the British SOE in the Vichy governed Nazi France. It is a gripping narrative of the risks and dangers that secret agents underwent as they lived under the Gestapo as they prepared for the D-Day landing. Pulling no punches, Allbeury tells of the divided loyalties, and betrayal that are the anon fodder of all excellent espionage novels. He finishes the novel by an investigation of what happened to the undercover agent in France, and whether it had anything to do with the mysterious suicide of the suspected KGB agent in London.

“The Twentieth Day of January” is yet another excellent thriller by Ted Allbeury set in 1980 Cold War era. With the Cold War raging, Logan Powell a powerful businessman has seemingly come out of nowhere to win the US presidency. He is waiting to be sworn in on 20th January as is the custom. In the UK, James Mackay of the Special Branch has uncovered evidence that suggest that the election might not have been as clean as everyone thought they were. Working with the CIA, albeit reluctantly, Mackay sets out on a daring and dangerous mission to find out if Powell the president-elect may be working to promote Soviet interests. The novel is remarkable thriller that offers some intense suspense and political intrigue that comes from knowledge that the future of the free world, and that of its bastion the United States may lie in the hands of one man.

2 Responses to “Ted Allbeury”

1. Vivi champion: 8 months ago

   Am totally fascinated by teds books and have all of them on my electric book. I have read them all three times.

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2. terence rainbow: 2 years ago

   I possess and have read all of Ted’s books and re-read them regularly because I just love his style and content. After reading “The Choice” I realized we had attended the same school, so in a way I was slightly biassed. I have signed copies of his books and have spoken to him when he was living in Kent. I cannot praise his writing more highly.

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