I keep an eye out in second hand bookshops!

I've read a couple but they're annoyingly hard to get hold of. Not on kobo at all.

Excellent. Now if we can just recruit another 9998 or so people, I'll have an audience for my licensed sequels!

I've contacted them, on what looks like a personal gmail address...we shall see, ahaha

Yep. the first two are serious and really quite quality war/spy thrillers. The rest are absolute tosh, in the best way.

Obvious warnings for just post WW2 settings and attitudes at points.

For anyone who would like to join in my Campbell and Forgan obsession, you want:

Without Lawful Authority
With Intent to Deceive / A Brother for Hugh
Let the Tiger Die
Now or Never
A Knife for the Juggler
Concrete Crime

Ideally read With Intent to Deceive before Let the Tiger Die.

Campbell and Forgan are recurring characters in maybe 6 or 7 of the Tommy Hambledon novels. If you get Without Lawful Authority (heads up for a bit of casual period offensiveness) I'm pretty sure that's their first appearance. 99p, a bargain of anyone's money in e!

the rabbit hole is calling me...

I might have to drop everything and go on a frankly unhinged publicity crusade here. (Yes, I *do* have two sets of edits on my desk right now.)

I am disappointed in ALL OF YOU. Do I have to do everything myself.

I just checked on AO3 and you know how many Campbell & Forgan fics there are?

None. NONE. Massively gay-coded recurring spy/model train maker/freelance psychopath couple in a once-successful spy franchise, and not one lousy fanfic!

DOOMED

yes, they're all on Kobo for 99p! Try Night Train to Paris or Without Lawful Authority as a starting point.

I did once get as far as trying to track down anyone representing the estate...nope.

I suppose one could just style it out. Publish it as "the long-awaited backstory for the classic antiheroes beloved of all OG spy readers", and be all "You haven't read Manning Coles? Really? Good heavens."

I would genuinely love to get permission from the Manning Coles estate and write a series of Campbell & Forgan thrillers, apart from literally nobody would know what I was on about or why.

I mean, that would suck. I am a writer whose hobby is choir. :/

I guess I'd just have to spend the entire year writing fanfic of the obscure but still copyrighted 1950s thrillers of which I am one of about 12 living readers.

There is a fine line between 'cheese toastie made with chilli relish' and 'chemical warfare' and my son has crossed it.

oh dear god that was disappointing. And I speak as someone who unironically loved League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Have you read The Cobra Event? It's about bioweapons, by the guy who wrote The Hot Zone. Proper scary and actually good!

oooh and only 99p, that sounds like a bargain!

I unironically love a high-concept thriller where the concept is high on bath salts, and I am so far from picky about logic and physics and biology and shit. But the author and the readers should be on the same side, you know?

I'm relieved to have others share my pain here. Why can't we just have nice (stupid) things??

And this guy does not get eaten by a dinosaur. Even *slightly*. It's infuriating.

Looks like absolute irredeemable tosh. Perfect, thank you!

I have read it, yes

If anyone does have a rec for a thriller involving palaeontology/archaeology / similar nonsense, hit me up. I have of course read The Meg and Jurassic Park and whatnot.

good lord I needed to get that off my chest. Now to edit my very sensible book about occultists in WW1.

I got aggressively invested in how annoyed I was by it