The Chill Factor: Suspense and Espionage in Cold War Iceland

by Richard Falkirk, Ragnar Jónasson (Introduction)

Overview

Iceland. In the winter it gets light at 10am and dark at 2pm. The daily announcement of the Chill Factor allows you to calculate how quickly you could die from exposure…

Iceland is erupting – and not just its volcano.

It is 1971, the height of the Cold War, and anti-American feeling among Icelanders is running high. When a teenager is found dead after a drunken night out, her clothes torn and face bruised, anger is directed towards the military personnel at the NATO air base at Keflavik who outnumber the local population.

British agent Bill Conran, invited by the Americans to uncover a Russian spy ring, comes to realise that this is no routine assignment. Unsure who can be trusted, and targeted by an unknown assassin, he discovers that Iceland, for all its cold beauty, has never been hotter.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780008433888
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/21/2021
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishers
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Richard Falkirk was a pseudonym of Derek Lambert, who was born in 1929. He served in the RAF for two and a half years and then worked as a journalist for local newspapers, becoming a foreign correspondent on the Daily Mirror and then the Daily Express, travelling the world to dangerous locations that later inspired his books. His first novel, Angels in the Snow (1969), was based on first-hand knowledge from a year’s assignment to Moscow and entailed him smuggling the manuscript out of the country in a wheelchair. From journeying up the Himalayas in a jeep to being shot at in Israel, his experiences informed his authentic tales of espionage and adventure that helped turn him into a bestselling author of more than 30 novels. Derek’s last book, Spanish Lessons, is an affectionate and often hilarious portrait of giving up life as a globe-trotting journalist to settling down to life in rural Spain with his wife Diane.

Table of Contents

1 The Stewardess 1

2 Charlie Martz 8

3 The Welcome 21

4 The Saga 30

5 The Saga of the Saga 37

6 Ruffled Feathers 47

7 Hekla 58

8 Two Devious Policemen 68

9 Airman First Class Fred Shirey 76

10 The Fugitive 89

11 The Grenadiers 105

12 The Fire-Bringing Giant 117

13 The Latchkey belonging to a Girl working in the office of a Barrister 124

14 Jefferey 141

15 The London End 155

16 National Day 162

17 Gudrun 174

18 The Files 191

19 Confessional 200

20 Black Death 219

Editorial Reviews

‘Pure James Bond … With dialogue as sharp as the icy wind, Richard Falkirk racks up the tension to a terrific climax.’—Daily Mail

‘Taut, cleanly written, building to a bang-up climax’—New York Times

‘Like a shot of aquavit … Iceland has never seemed colder or hotter’—Kirkus

‘Reminiscent of John Le Carré’—Newsday

‘Tough in style and content, surpising in plot twists; good entertainment’—San Francisco Chronicle

‘Recommended for fans of spy thrillers and Icelandic crime fiction’—FictionFanBlog

From the Publisher