October 19, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode we discuss the publicaiton of Quantum of Menace, the first book in a new mystery series featuring Q from the Bond franchise. We also recall the true crime case of the poison-tipped umbrella, a Cold War assassination from the 1970s.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we have a very special guest me. My latest novel,
Quantum of Menace, is out this week on October the
twenty third, and it is a big deal and my
lovely co host mister Mukerjee has kindly agreed to make
this episode all about me, though we will have time
to look at an intriguing spy assassination case, namely the
(00:25):
case of the poison tipped umbrella. Abbert. How are you,
my friend me, I'm very good, and you know why
I'm very good. I do know why because ever since
you've been on you've been stuffing your face with chocolate.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well there is that, but I was happy before. I
ate the chocolate and I am eating chocolate, ladies and gentlemen.
But it's healthy chocolate. It is dark chocolate. And yeah,
I'm basically keeping myself alive with this stuff. So yes,
but that's not what I am happy for. I am
happy because I am reading your latest book, the one
that you are here to talk about tonight. And I
(01:01):
must say it's taken you ten years you've learnt to write,
haven't you. This book is brilliant. Tell us the truth
who wrote it.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, that means a great deal to me, my friend.
I would take it slightly more seriously if you were
not wearing rather a comical hat. I have to describe
this to you listeners because Abber's head is quite odd shaped,
so it's hats don't really suit him.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
That is actually true. I have a coconut shaped head.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's very disappointing, and for some reason, you've decided, for
the first time ever to turn up to this podcast
recording wearing a baseball cap that doesn't quite fit you.
And it's got.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Something fits perfectly, like.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
A glove, the glove that didn't fit oh Jason. But
what does it say on it? It's got some esoteric writing.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
It says Rhino Arc, which is a rhino charity in Kenya,
which I once did some sponsoring for. I may have
done a sponsored drink as far as I recall. It
involved drinking a lot of beer for charity, and so yes,
the rhino saved. I think the white rhino is saved
because I drank beer and I have the hat to
(02:05):
prove it.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Did you buy a rhino while you were I bought
a round or two.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I don't remember buying a rhino.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, that's the point you were in your cup, so
you don't.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Really know what exactly for charity.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Will your wife be pleased if a van turns up
tomorrow with a rhino in the back.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
The last time I was at your house for dinner,
she was very displeased that a man with a van
ful of fish had turned up.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Let's not talk about the fish story I was. I
was mugged, mugged by a fish salesman. That's a story
for another night. I fear that is not the story
for tonight. That story will just have to join the queue.
See what I did there? See what I did?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
A lovely segue, my friend, a lovely So let me
tell people about this book, because I'm going to make
a concerted effort, dear listeners, to convince you to help
me out by buying a copy of Quantum of Menace.
It's out on October the twenty third, later this week,
and I'm competing against a god knows five hundred, six
hundred other books which are being released that very day,
(03:09):
including all of the big names. So you must take
pity on me and invest in at least one copy
of Quantum of Menace. So the book is the first
in a series featuring Q from the James Bond franchise.
They're traditional mysteries, not spy novels, but hopefully even die
hard Bond fans will find something there. Lots of Easter eggs,
(03:30):
and the canvas, of course, of Q's past in the
spy world is there against which I write this particular story.
So Q, who is aged fifty, so he is neither
Desmond Llewellen nor Ben Wishaw. He's my interpretation of Q,
and I had free. I had free a free hand
to draw Q as a real flesh and blood person,
because he doesn't really appear in the books very much,
(03:52):
and in the movies is usually a five minute clip
of exploding gadgets rather than a real whole human being.
So Q is booted out of six unceremoniously by the
new m and he's a man at sea. He's got
no wife, he's got no kids, and so he's slightly
lost after three decades at mi I six. So what
does he do? He receives a letter from his childhood
(04:14):
friend Peter Napier, a quantum computer scientist who has recently
died under mysterious circumstances, and that letter draws him back
to his hometown at a small town called Wixton on Water,
fictional town just a couple of hours out from London.
And once Q gets back, he decides that he's going
to reinvestigate his friend's mysterious death, and of course that
(04:37):
pits him up against the police who have put the
case to bed, and it also means that Q has
to now confront a rather messy pass that he left
behind in Wixton thirty years earlier. So this book is
for fans of So this book is pitched somewhere between
Mick Heron Slow Horses novels and Richard Osmond's Thursday Murder Club.
(04:59):
So if you like a mystery, you like a good puzzle,
bit of action, dash of romance, a lot of dry
observational humor, all in the company of one of the
world's most iconic fictional characters, then this book is for you.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Have you said that before, because that was really slick.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Well, I have been on as you know, because I've
been sending you pictures and messages. I have been on
a seven festival tour around the country, already to plug
this book.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Where has you been this week?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Oh, I saw over the last three weeks. So I went.
So I took my car along. And because I was
going to be away for so long and my wife
doesn't trust me, she decided to come along with me.
So we drove up to Newcastle, then down to Torquay
for a festival there, then to North Cornwall for a
lovely festival there, which you've also done in the company
Booker prize winners and Booker nominees. Then up to Wales
(05:53):
and then from there to Chiltern while you were sweeing
yourself in France, and then to Ipswich for their first
ever book festival. And I was on the Isle of
Wight over the weekend where you and I were many
years ago, and this time I managed to be because
I was on my own. I suspect I was given
(06:15):
my own room and we did not have to share
a room.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh that's good. I'm glad you got your own room
this time. That's lovely. I must say. Let me talk
about a bit about this, but because it is brilliant,
it is really really excellent. It's like it's like you've
swallowed a proper writer, and you've turned out something brilliant.
Here a couple of questions. Q. You call him Q
(06:39):
throughout the book a lot as opposed to Major booth Froyd.
Why do you do that?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Well, I mean that was a very deliberate decision, and
that's because readers and viewers are more familiar with the
name Q. So Q is actually a mashup of of
different characters. He started off as Major Boothroyd, the armora
for the Double O section in Q Branch, which is
of course part of six, Britain's foreign secret intelligence agency.
(07:07):
And then he sort of morphed into Q in the films,
and then he's been sort of schmoosed together as that
one entity. But he really isn't mentioned very much in
the books at all. So I had a free hand
to create a character who is very serious. He takes
himself very seriously. As I said, he's age fifty, so
he's been around for a while, and he's had three
decades of understanding the world in his place within it,
(07:31):
which is basically to arm the Double O's, these assassins
the of MI six, and to give them field kit
to help them in their operations around the world.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Now, I'm giving him a backstory you have, haven'ty. You
have given him a past romantic interest who we get
to meet. You have given him a dad who we
get to meet and we find out about his family history.
So you have created all of that. You have created canon.
(08:01):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They have all without the use of AI. So it's
all yes, it's all my own work. People. So that
was the fun part of this project because I was
asked to do it by the Inflaming Estate and they
basically gave me a free hand. They said, look, all
we want is a series of books where Q is
a protagonist, and we want them to be traditional mysteries
rather than than rocket launchers by novels. Could you go
(08:25):
off and give us some ideas. And you know Quantum
of Menace, which is my title, and it suits the
plot because it's a mysterious death of a quantum computer scientist.
They were very happy with that particular plot for the
first book. And you're right. My favorite character in the
book is actually Q's father, who is Mortimer Boothroyd, who's
a retired seventy eight year old professor of Roman history
(08:47):
who taught at the University of Oxford. His whole life,
and he and Q have been estranged for a reason
that well, I'll leave people to find that out in
the book. But they've been estranged for three decades. And
he is a very precise man and intellectual man, but
he's also very acerbic, and when he and Q eventually
meet up, sparks sparks fly. But at the same time,
(09:09):
it's quite a poignant, poignant meeting again because we get
to peel away layers of Q's past and discover that
at heart, like all of us, I guess when we
when we meet our parents again under less than ideal circumstances,
we revert to being children again.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I got definite vibes of Indiana Jones and his father.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Do you know it's amazing that you say that. Sometimes
sometimes I wonder, I wonder at you You're you're you're
you're actually lute, perspicacious. Let's put it that because handsome
is is overegging the pudding a little bit. Because when
I was, when I was thinking of the dynamic between
Q and his father Mortimer or mort Boothroyd, I had
(09:52):
exactly that image in mind, Sean Connery and Harrison Ford
as father and son. In I think it was the
third Indiana Jones movie.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The last crew said, and yes, you do it very well.
I must say, now, another thing that you have given Q,
which I thought, that's an interesting choice. You've given him
an interesting choice of car. It absolutely fits given that
Q has this past of designing, you know, special cars
for the double Ores. Tell us about the car that
(10:21):
you chose for Q.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Well, I have to be honest that that was a
suggestion that came from one of the people working at
the publishers How Publishers, because I wanted to give Q
a car, and I was thinking of what sort of
car would suit him, because you know, the Bond franchise
is known for its fabulous Yeah, but he can't have
an Aston Martin. He can't ever Bentley, which was Bond's
original car, And so we came up with the idea
(10:45):
of a k Trum. Now, a k Trum is a
specialist sports car, but it's also one that you can
order and build yourself, which is why I thought it
would be perfect for a man like Q.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And I am it is perfect and and it's British.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Wh It's British made, which is even more suitable. And
the Krum company actually invited me along to have a
little play around with the with their car. So I've
got some great footage of me in their fact sitting
in one of these things, and it's it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Probably did you get to drive it?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
They have offered me the chance to drive it. I
didn't get a chance to drive it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Have you told them about your driving?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I told them I'm better on a horse behind the wheel.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You crap on a horse.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Listen, if you want to come along that they absolutely
unless you're driving.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
But yeah, I'm absolutely up for coming to Caterham and
and being in one of these things.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You also mentioned Que's romantic interest. Yes, he spent most
of his life, most of his life alone or in
very short relationships, and part of the reason for that
is that when he was young, his his childhood sweetheart
who became his fiancee, he jilted her almost at the altar,
(11:58):
and so it's quite a shock to him to come
back three decades later and discover that not only she's
still around, but she is actually the detective chief inspector
who was in charge of the investigation that has been
put to bed of his childhood friend, who Q is
now determined to reopen. So not only not only is
DCI Kathy Burnham not very pleased to see Q back
(12:20):
in town, but she's even less pleased to see him
reopening a case that she thought that had been reopening
a case that she thought she had closed.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
And there's a great talking about Kathy Burnham. There is
a great menagerie of supporting characters here. We have Syrians,
we have other policemen, tell us, I mean how and
they all have such rich profiles and backstories. I mean,
there is one chapter which is just given over to
(12:55):
a policeman and his family situation and his wife's cancer.
And it's a beautiful chapter. Because you know, the way
that we have been taught to right in the modern
world is if it does not move the plot on significantly,
you shorten it. But you've given us this beautiful insight
into a character. Can you do this time and time again?
(13:16):
You do it with a young Syrian lad as well?
To tell us about that? Tell us how you decide
what to put into the backstories of some of these
ancillary characters.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah. So, so all of the characters in the book
do there is a reason for them being there. As
we discover some of the twists turns are revealed. But
you're right. A book like this, I think, is very
character driven. And it's the reason that millions of people
by Richard Osmond's novel novels, the Thursday Murder Club series.
(13:48):
It's the reason that millions of people by Mick Hero
and Slow Horses novels. It's because the journey is as
much about understanding and peeling away layers of these characters,
getting to know them, as it is about the actual
actual complexity of the plot. And I had a lot
of fun with some of these characters, I guess. Another
one of my favorites is a chap called medium Tony
(14:10):
mm hmmm, and he's a mechanic who works in the
local garage, but who also works for organized criminals chopping
up stolen cars, and that figures into the plot at
some squashing stolen cars right, squashing them as well with
a compactor, sometimes rather uncomfortably with people still in them.
But Tony's a good sort at heart, but of course
(14:32):
he has no say when these organized criminal gangsters come
to town. Can I can I do a quick reading
to give people a flavor?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Do you have to? I feel that I do feel
you don't think we've lost enough of an audience. Gone
then gone, then what's the harm in it? Gone? Give
us a reading.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So this takes place very early on the book, when
we're seeing Q after he's been booted out of six
and he's reflecting on his current adrift position.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Oh yeah, this is the good.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
How long had it been three months since the new
m in post less than a year had called him
into her office to deliver the coup de gras. No
surprise retirement party, no teary speeches, no glass of Lithuanian
Chiraz pressed into his hands by the office temp together
with a humorous leaving card featuring an old man with
trousers at half mast. The words walk the plank had
hovered over the conversation conversation. Conversation would imply a batting
(15:23):
of balls back and forth, but the only balls being
batted had been his own. He remembered the savage satisfaction
in M's eyes. They had never got on, not since
Q had testified at a Joint Intelligence Committee hearing on
the dangers of AI deployment within Britain's defense infrastructure, exposing
the fact that the then prospective m knew as much
about artificial intelligence as she did the actual thing, as
(15:43):
in neither had ever had occasion to burden her gray matter.
Back in the bedroom, he sat down at his desk,
reached into a drawer and pulled out a plastic false
cap folder in neon orange. From though folder he extracted
a single item, a letter, handwritten, not actually a letter,
barely a handful of lines. The note for the note
was from Pete. If you're reading this, I'm dead. I
can't tell you everything. I don't have all of the
(16:05):
answers that would be your job should you choose to
come back. That's the inciting incident that gets Que to
return to his hometown, and he needs a project at
the time, because, as I said, he's all at sea.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I think that's it. You know what, It is a fabulous,
fabulous book, and you it is packed with sparkling asides,
wonderful wit, and a plot that just bounces along. It's like,
as I say, it's like you've suddenly learned how to write.
It's impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Well, I'm really pleased because, as you may know, earlier
this week I was signing signing lots of copies in
readiness for the launch, and it is a beautiful looking hardback.
I mean, I can't take any credit for it, but
the publishers have done an amazing job with the design.
There's lots of lovely silver foil for the title, and
it's a beautiful red cover, very christmasy. I mean, there's
(17:00):
various special editions available as well to order. I should stay.
Waterston's have got their own one with sprayed edges and
lovely beautiful end papers. And Goldsborough Book Books have a
blue edition signed, and you know that's got its own
sort of lovely silvery foil as well. And there's an
addition for independent booksellers with its own sprayed edges. So
do go in to your local bookseller if you want
(17:22):
to and pre order the book. Can I just read
you some of the lovely comments that our fellow crime
writers have made? Yes, these do these people even further
if they're not already convinced that they need a copy
of this book in their life, right, So Mick Heron,
Mick says, clever, cunning and quirky. Mister Mark Billingham says,
(17:42):
a cunning and propulsive thriller brimming with wit, and Cleaves says,
a wonderful novel, escapist and playful. And then we've got
Lee Child on the front saying, pay attention, double o seven.
This is a story we always wanted. And Charlie Higgson,
who perhaps captures exactly what I was trying to do.
Most of all, he says, an entertaining mashup of Fleming,
(18:04):
Le Carree and the best of British detective fiction.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And it is wonderful. It is absolutely wonderful. I would
chime in and just say, it's a tour deive force.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Right, well, thank you, my friend. But enough enough of
quantum of menace. Let's talk about a real life espionage case.
Would you like to know about the case of the
poison tipped umbrella?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I would, because it's wonderful. I remember this happening right
when we were kids.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, of course, because you are eighty and you were
probably thirty.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Year Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm
younger than you, but I remember when this happened. So
tell us the story. Tell our audience who may not
know the story, because it is a story involving Bulgarians,
Bulgarian Bulgarians, I believe it is.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Indeed, So this is the story of the assassination of
a Bulgarian dissident named Georgie even of Markov. So let
me tell you a little bit about this chat before
we go into his actual Killie so Georgi Markov. He
was born in nineteen twenty nine in Sofia and the
(19:12):
capital city of Bulgaria, and to begin with his career
was quite the day. He studied chemistry and went on
to become a chemical engineer, and that is probably what
inspired his first book, because his first book, which was
published in nineteen fifty seven, was a novel called The
Night of Caesium. Now, it's quite difficult to find any
(19:33):
details about what this book is actually about, but caesion
is a is a metal, right, It's a soft, silvery
gold like alkali metal, and I can't imagine that that
would be the focus of this pot boiler. So I
can only guess at what the book might actually have
been about. So you know, but it sold well, and
(19:57):
so his career as a novelist was off to a
good start. And then he published several other books, The
IAX Winners in nineteen fifty nine, a couple of collections
of short stories. But as he was doing so, as
he was doing so, his fiction began to take potshots
at the regime, because what we have to remember is
that Bulgaria at this time was the People's Republic of Bulgaria,
(20:22):
because from nineteen forty six to nineteen ninety Bulgaria was
a communist state very much modeled on the Soviet Union,
adopting similar policies to the Soviet Union and transforming itself
into that kind of nation. And of course mister Markov
(20:42):
was not very pleased about that, and so he began
to take potshots. And these potshots were noticed by the
Bulgarian intelligence servant services, and so he came onto their radar,
so much so that in nineteen sixty nine he was
forced to leave and he ended up in Italy for
a bit, and then he thought that he would hang
around and then go back to Bulgaria, but he was
(21:04):
forced to change his mind because the Bulgarian government refused
to renew his passport, and that's when he ended up
in London and he learned English. It was very clever, chapid,
he learnt very very quickly, and in en he ended
up working for BBC's World Service, specifically for the Bulgarian desk,
and from there he decided to continue his anti communist
(21:27):
rantings by working for a German state funded TV network
called Deutscher Weller and then Radio Free Europe. And that's
where the trouble really began because Radio Free Europe, also
known as Radio Liberty, was backed by the Americans, and
so the Bulgarians government didn't really like what he was
(21:49):
saying through these various channels, and so they decided to
sentence him in in his absence, to six years and
six months in prison as defector. And there was a
big hooha in Bulgaria. His his books, whether they were
they were about soft metals or not, were we're drawn
from libraries and bookshops. And his name was his name
(22:12):
was stricken practically from the record from all Bulgarian media.
And of course it goes darker than that. The Bulgarian
secret Service opened a file on him and they gave
him a lovely code name. They called him the Wonderer,
the Wanderer, and the Wonderer.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
He goes around around around sorry to carry on, and
who sang that?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I can't remember who sang that?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Its quote? Wasn't it the quote?
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I can't remember? I don't know. Yeah, But he got,
but it wouldn't It didn't stop him from getting up
to mischief because he wrote, He wrote plays, and he
wrote the play in Edinburgh called Archangel Michael. He wrote
a novel called The Right Honorable Chimpanzee co written with
someone called David Phillips, was only published after his death,
(23:01):
so you know he kept active. But because of his
constant critiquing of the communist regime in Bulgaria, and because
he was quite a sarcastic chap, they decided I guess
at some point that enough was enough. And so on
September seventh, nineteen seventy eight, as Georgie was walking across
(23:26):
Waterloo Bridge in London, of course, and he was waiting
for a bus to take him to his offices at
the BBC, he felt a sharp pain on the back
of his right thigh, which he thought was an insect
bite or sting at first, and he turned around and
he saw this man picking an umbrella off the ground
(23:46):
before wandering off. And later, while he was at work
at BBC World Service offices, he noticed a little pimple
forming at the site of the sting, and the pain
began to increase an increase, and wouldn't go away, and
so he developed a fever, later admitted to Saint James
(24:06):
Hospital in Balin, and four days later he was dead
at the age of forty nine. Oh well, my friend,
what do you think of that?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It was scary? And you know what, it's sort of
set a precedent, didn't it. Carry on? Carry on, tell us,
tell us what happened.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Okay, So you have these sort of poignant stories of
what happened. So there's a doctor called Dr Bernard Riley
who was working the night shift at Saint James Hospital
that day and he was given a handover when Georgie
came in and he reports that someone said to him, oh,
(24:47):
by the way, there's some nutter in cubicle three who
says he's been shot by the KGB. Because initially Georgie
Mark thought that he'd been shot rather than than poisoned.
And then when he examined markof Dr Riley, he says,
I will never forget it. He said, I have been
poisoned by the KGB and there is absolutely nothing you
(25:09):
can do, quite sad. And in the end they discovered,
of course that it was rice in poison. Now what
do you know about ricin poison?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Didn't they use that in Japan? Wasn't there like a
cult that used ricin to murder a lot of people
on the underground the subway there?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
They may well have been. It's very very potent, it is, indeed.
But let me tell you something hugely interesting about ricin.
So ricin is a toxin that's produced in the seeds
of the castor oil plant. Yes, the same plant that
gives us castor oil. Do you know what castor oil
(25:48):
is good for?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Isn't it for making you throw up? Maybe that's the link.
Maybe it's because it makes you throw up because or
does it soothe your stomach? What does it do?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well? Castor oil apparently is very very good as a laxative.
So the next time you're buned up there you go
get some time unbunned up.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
I shall remember that castor oil it is.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
It's also very very good for hair and skin, so
you know, if you I mean, it might explain your
amazing head of hair, thank you. So he died of
rising poisoning, and the police went to work, and they
carried out an extensive investigation, and they came up with
a few suspects, but they never really apprehended anybody for
(26:29):
the crime. So do you want to hear the chief
suspect in the murder of Georgi Markov? Yes, I do, Okay.
So they reckon that the chief suspect was a Bulgarian
intelligence operative I an assassin named Francesco Huilino, who was
known by his code name Agent Picker Dilly, What a
(26:52):
great name. Scotland Yard reckoned that he was there, He
was the culprit. But he remained free his whole life
until he died in twenty twenty one. And they reckon
and these are these are somebody else's words. They reckon.
He was a master in infiltration. He could go into
any kind of environment and become the person he wanted to.
(27:14):
People around him die, and he is like a shadow.
He just moves on. It just sounds a lot like that.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
It does sound a lot like me. People die wherever
I go, and I just move on, move and right on.
They call me Agent Old Kent Road.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Anyway. So Markov's murder, of course, has been enshrined in law.
And of course we know that spy writers have borrowed
that kind of idea of oh.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I mean to be murdered by an umbrella and a
poison injecting umbrella. It's pretty impressive, except it was a projectile,
wasn't It was this very small projectile that it fired
at his leg because they found it, didn't they They
actually found the projectile with the hole in it that
let the poison in. So that's it. It's an amazing story,
(28:06):
the fact that people would do that in London, and
then it's echoed, you know, several decades later by all
the poisoning of that x KGB agent. I forgot his name,
and there was two. There was one in London, and
then there was one out in Salisbury.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Wasn't there? Indeed?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And I guess it's it's it's part of the course
now for intelligence agencies around the world to carry out
these kind of kind of assassinations. Have you have you
ever been jabbed in the ass by an umbrella? Got
a very big ass of good big target umbrella. What
have you been jabbed in the bottom by? Then?
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Oh, God, loads of things, but not an umbrella. That
would be that would be uncalled for.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I'm quite nervous to ask when you say loads of
things have have jabbed you in the bottom? You know
what I'm.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
CAPTI needles. Yeah, injection when I was a kid. Do
you never get an injection in the bottom when you
were a kid?
Speaker 1 (29:03):
I can't remember rhino horn when you were buying rhinos.
I mean, did a rhino.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Not that I recall. I mean there was a lot
of alcohol consumed, so it is possible, but I do
not recall being jabbed up the ass by a rhino.
I apologize for my lack of clarity on that matter.
I must say that that, you know, the story of
Georgian Markoff is one of my favorite espionage stories. You know,
(29:34):
it speaks. It is pure James Bond stuff right. Indeed,
it's truth stranger than fiction there.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Is and and the coda to that is is quite poignant.
He's actually buried in the UK. He's not buried in
back in Bulgaria. He is. His grave can be can
be viewed. It's in a small churchyard at the Church
of Saint Candida and Holy Cross in can Nonicorum. Endorse it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Okay, that's interesting talking about odd places. Now, your place
that you have created in this novel which turn on
the water? Is that supposed to be in the Cotswolds?
Where is it exactly tell.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Us, No, it's in the Home Counties. It's just a
couple of hours out out of London, because I wanted
it to be close enough for Q to come back
to London where he has an actual house, and as
you know, some of the action takes place in London.
When he comes to he tracked down a little bit
more about what quantum computers actually are and what they
might be used for. So he comes to University College
(30:37):
London is my neck of the woods, and he meets
some scientists and talks about that, and of course he
decides to barge back in on m I six to
try and get some information there. But of course he's
now persona non grata. So that makes for a very
compelling couple of couple of chapters.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Well, it's wonderful. I must say. It's one of the
best things that I've read in a while.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
And I'm loving it, and I am loving you for
loving it.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Ah. Well, on that amorous bombshell, I think we should finish.
I think, ladies and gentlemen, I must say, when when
is it out again? Twenty third?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
So it's out this week, Quantum of Menace. Do get
your pre orders in, Do get your orders in, Do
go into your bookshops on the day, Do tell your
friends about it, Do buy it for Christmas. I would
be eternally grateful.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I shall do all of those things.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So will our readers, listeners, listeners, So will our listeners.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have enjoyed this podcast, please
do go out and buy pre order slight, line up
and wait for the shops to open. You know, order
your copy of this book, The Quantum of Menace. It
is fabulous. I don't often use the word fabulous in
(31:55):
the context of my good friend, but this time it
is justified. So please do go ahead.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
I should say that for those who enjoy an audiobook,
we've got none other than Alexander Armstrong who has read
the audiobook. He and I've listened to him, and he's
absolutely nailed it. He's absolutely embodied the queue that I
have created and all of the other wonderful characters in
the book. So thank you to Alexander.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Well, that is amazing. Linden and gentlemen, if you've enjoyed
the episode, please do leave a review on your favorite
podcast app, and please do spread the word. Mister Kahn
if we were to be secret agents, what would our
code names be?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Double OH minus one and double OW minus two and.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
On that arithmetically incomprehensible bombshell. Lidies and gentlemen, we have
been your friends. The Red Hot Chinley Writers on Murder
Junction
Welcome to Murder Junction everyone. This week on the show,
we have a very special guest me. My latest novel,
Quantum of Menace, is out this week on October the
twenty third, and it is a big deal and my
lovely co host mister Mukerjee has kindly agreed to make
this episode all about me, though we will have time
to look at an intriguing spy assassination case, namely the
(00:25):
case of the poison tipped umbrella. Abbert. How are you,
my friend me, I'm very good, and you know why
I'm very good. I do know why because ever since
you've been on you've been stuffing your face with chocolate.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well there is that, but I was happy before. I
ate the chocolate and I am eating chocolate, ladies and gentlemen.
But it's healthy chocolate. It is dark chocolate. And yeah,
I'm basically keeping myself alive with this stuff. So yes,
but that's not what I am happy for. I am
happy because I am reading your latest book, the one
that you are here to talk about tonight. And I
(01:01):
must say it's taken you ten years you've learnt to write,
haven't you. This book is brilliant. Tell us the truth
who wrote it.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, that means a great deal to me, my friend.
I would take it slightly more seriously if you were
not wearing rather a comical hat. I have to describe
this to you listeners because Abber's head is quite odd shaped,
so it's hats don't really suit him.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
That is actually true. I have a coconut shaped head.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's very disappointing, and for some reason, you've decided, for
the first time ever to turn up to this podcast
recording wearing a baseball cap that doesn't quite fit you.
And it's got.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Something fits perfectly, like.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
A glove, the glove that didn't fit oh Jason. But
what does it say on it? It's got some esoteric writing.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
It says Rhino Arc, which is a rhino charity in Kenya,
which I once did some sponsoring for. I may have
done a sponsored drink as far as I recall. It
involved drinking a lot of beer for charity, and so yes,
the rhino saved. I think the white rhino is saved
because I drank beer and I have the hat to
(02:05):
prove it.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Did you buy a rhino while you were I bought
a round or two.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I don't remember buying a rhino.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, that's the point you were in your cup, so
you don't.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Really know what exactly for charity.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Will your wife be pleased if a van turns up
tomorrow with a rhino in the back.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
The last time I was at your house for dinner,
she was very displeased that a man with a van
ful of fish had turned up.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Let's not talk about the fish story I was. I
was mugged, mugged by a fish salesman. That's a story
for another night. I fear that is not the story
for tonight. That story will just have to join the queue.
See what I did there? See what I did?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
A lovely segue, my friend, a lovely So let me
tell people about this book, because I'm going to make
a concerted effort, dear listeners, to convince you to help
me out by buying a copy of Quantum of Menace.
It's out on October the twenty third, later this week,
and I'm competing against a god knows five hundred, six
hundred other books which are being released that very day,
(03:09):
including all of the big names. So you must take
pity on me and invest in at least one copy
of Quantum of Menace. So the book is the first
in a series featuring Q from the James Bond franchise.
They're traditional mysteries, not spy novels, but hopefully even die
hard Bond fans will find something there. Lots of Easter eggs,
(03:30):
and the canvas, of course, of Q's past in the
spy world is there against which I write this particular story.
So Q, who is aged fifty, so he is neither
Desmond Llewellen nor Ben Wishaw. He's my interpretation of Q,
and I had free. I had free a free hand
to draw Q as a real flesh and blood person,
because he doesn't really appear in the books very much,
(03:52):
and in the movies is usually a five minute clip
of exploding gadgets rather than a real whole human being.
So Q is booted out of six unceremoniously by the
new m and he's a man at sea. He's got
no wife, he's got no kids, and so he's slightly
lost after three decades at mi I six. So what
does he do? He receives a letter from his childhood
(04:14):
friend Peter Napier, a quantum computer scientist who has recently
died under mysterious circumstances, and that letter draws him back
to his hometown at a small town called Wixton on Water,
fictional town just a couple of hours out from London.
And once Q gets back, he decides that he's going
to reinvestigate his friend's mysterious death, and of course that
(04:37):
pits him up against the police who have put the
case to bed, and it also means that Q has
to now confront a rather messy pass that he left
behind in Wixton thirty years earlier. So this book is
for fans of So this book is pitched somewhere between
Mick Heron Slow Horses novels and Richard Osmond's Thursday Murder Club.
(04:59):
So if you like a mystery, you like a good puzzle,
bit of action, dash of romance, a lot of dry
observational humor, all in the company of one of the
world's most iconic fictional characters, then this book is for you.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Have you said that before, because that was really slick.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Well, I have been on as you know, because I've
been sending you pictures and messages. I have been on
a seven festival tour around the country, already to plug
this book.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Where has you been this week?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Oh, I saw over the last three weeks. So I went.
So I took my car along. And because I was
going to be away for so long and my wife
doesn't trust me, she decided to come along with me.
So we drove up to Newcastle, then down to Torquay
for a festival there, then to North Cornwall for a
lovely festival there, which you've also done in the company
Booker prize winners and Booker nominees. Then up to Wales
(05:53):
and then from there to Chiltern while you were sweeing
yourself in France, and then to Ipswich for their first
ever book festival. And I was on the Isle of
Wight over the weekend where you and I were many
years ago, and this time I managed to be because
I was on my own. I suspect I was given
(06:15):
my own room and we did not have to share
a room.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh that's good. I'm glad you got your own room
this time. That's lovely. I must say. Let me talk
about a bit about this, but because it is brilliant,
it is really really excellent. It's like it's like you've
swallowed a proper writer, and you've turned out something brilliant.
Here a couple of questions. Q. You call him Q
(06:39):
throughout the book a lot as opposed to Major booth Froyd.
Why do you do that?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Well, I mean that was a very deliberate decision, and
that's because readers and viewers are more familiar with the
name Q. So Q is actually a mashup of of
different characters. He started off as Major Boothroyd, the armora
for the Double O section in Q Branch, which is
of course part of six, Britain's foreign secret intelligence agency.
(07:07):
And then he sort of morphed into Q in the films,
and then he's been sort of schmoosed together as that
one entity. But he really isn't mentioned very much in
the books at all. So I had a free hand
to create a character who is very serious. He takes
himself very seriously. As I said, he's age fifty, so
he's been around for a while, and he's had three
decades of understanding the world in his place within it,
(07:31):
which is basically to arm the Double O's, these assassins
the of MI six, and to give them field kit
to help them in their operations around the world.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Now, I'm giving him a backstory you have, haven'ty. You
have given him a past romantic interest who we get
to meet. You have given him a dad who we
get to meet and we find out about his family history.
So you have created all of that. You have created canon.
(08:01):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
They have all without the use of AI. So it's
all yes, it's all my own work. People. So that
was the fun part of this project because I was
asked to do it by the Inflaming Estate and they
basically gave me a free hand. They said, look, all
we want is a series of books where Q is
a protagonist, and we want them to be traditional mysteries
rather than than rocket launchers by novels. Could you go
(08:25):
off and give us some ideas. And you know Quantum
of Menace, which is my title, and it suits the
plot because it's a mysterious death of a quantum computer scientist.
They were very happy with that particular plot for the
first book. And you're right. My favorite character in the
book is actually Q's father, who is Mortimer Boothroyd, who's
a retired seventy eight year old professor of Roman history
(08:47):
who taught at the University of Oxford. His whole life,
and he and Q have been estranged for a reason
that well, I'll leave people to find that out in
the book. But they've been estranged for three decades. And
he is a very precise man and intellectual man, but
he's also very acerbic, and when he and Q eventually
meet up, sparks sparks fly. But at the same time,
(09:09):
it's quite a poignant, poignant meeting again because we get
to peel away layers of Q's past and discover that
at heart, like all of us, I guess when we
when we meet our parents again under less than ideal circumstances,
we revert to being children again.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I got definite vibes of Indiana Jones and his father.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Do you know it's amazing that you say that. Sometimes
sometimes I wonder, I wonder at you You're you're you're
you're actually lute, perspicacious. Let's put it that because handsome
is is overegging the pudding a little bit. Because when
I was, when I was thinking of the dynamic between
Q and his father Mortimer or mort Boothroyd, I had
(09:52):
exactly that image in mind, Sean Connery and Harrison Ford
as father and son. In I think it was the
third Indiana Jones movie.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The last crew said, and yes, you do it very well.
I must say, now, another thing that you have given Q,
which I thought, that's an interesting choice. You've given him
an interesting choice of car. It absolutely fits given that
Q has this past of designing, you know, special cars
for the double Ores. Tell us about the car that
(10:21):
you chose for Q.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Well, I have to be honest that that was a
suggestion that came from one of the people working at
the publishers How Publishers, because I wanted to give Q
a car, and I was thinking of what sort of
car would suit him, because you know, the Bond franchise
is known for its fabulous Yeah, but he can't have
an Aston Martin. He can't ever Bentley, which was Bond's
original car, And so we came up with the idea
(10:45):
of a k Trum. Now, a k Trum is a
specialist sports car, but it's also one that you can
order and build yourself, which is why I thought it
would be perfect for a man like Q.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And I am it is perfect and and it's British.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Wh It's British made, which is even more suitable. And
the Krum company actually invited me along to have a
little play around with the with their car. So I've
got some great footage of me in their fact sitting
in one of these things, and it's it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Probably did you get to drive it?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
They have offered me the chance to drive it. I
didn't get a chance to drive it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Have you told them about your driving?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I told them I'm better on a horse behind the wheel.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You crap on a horse.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Listen, if you want to come along that they absolutely
unless you're driving.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
But yeah, I'm absolutely up for coming to Caterham and
and being in one of these things.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You also mentioned Que's romantic interest. Yes, he spent most
of his life, most of his life alone or in
very short relationships, and part of the reason for that
is that when he was young, his his childhood sweetheart
who became his fiancee, he jilted her almost at the altar,
(11:58):
and so it's quite a shock to him to come
back three decades later and discover that not only she's
still around, but she is actually the detective chief inspector
who was in charge of the investigation that has been
put to bed of his childhood friend, who Q is
now determined to reopen. So not only not only is
DCI Kathy Burnham not very pleased to see Q back
(12:20):
in town, but she's even less pleased to see him
reopening a case that she thought that had been reopening
a case that she thought she had closed.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
And there's a great talking about Kathy Burnham. There is
a great menagerie of supporting characters here. We have Syrians,
we have other policemen, tell us, I mean how and
they all have such rich profiles and backstories. I mean,
there is one chapter which is just given over to
(12:55):
a policeman and his family situation and his wife's cancer.
And it's a beautiful chapter. Because you know, the way
that we have been taught to right in the modern
world is if it does not move the plot on significantly,
you shorten it. But you've given us this beautiful insight
into a character. Can you do this time and time again?
(13:16):
You do it with a young Syrian lad as well?
To tell us about that? Tell us how you decide
what to put into the backstories of some of these
ancillary characters.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah. So, so all of the characters in the book
do there is a reason for them being there. As
we discover some of the twists turns are revealed. But
you're right. A book like this, I think, is very
character driven. And it's the reason that millions of people
by Richard Osmond's novel novels, the Thursday Murder Club series.
(13:48):
It's the reason that millions of people by Mick Hero
and Slow Horses novels. It's because the journey is as
much about understanding and peeling away layers of these characters,
getting to know them, as it is about the actual
actual complexity of the plot. And I had a lot
of fun with some of these characters, I guess. Another
one of my favorites is a chap called medium Tony
(14:10):
mm hmmm, and he's a mechanic who works in the
local garage, but who also works for organized criminals chopping
up stolen cars, and that figures into the plot at
some squashing stolen cars right, squashing them as well with
a compactor, sometimes rather uncomfortably with people still in them.
But Tony's a good sort at heart, but of course
(14:32):
he has no say when these organized criminal gangsters come
to town. Can I can I do a quick reading
to give people a flavor?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Do you have to? I feel that I do feel
you don't think we've lost enough of an audience. Gone
then gone, then what's the harm in it? Gone? Give
us a reading.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So this takes place very early on the book, when
we're seeing Q after he's been booted out of six
and he's reflecting on his current adrift position.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Oh yeah, this is the good.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
How long had it been three months since the new
m in post less than a year had called him
into her office to deliver the coup de gras. No
surprise retirement party, no teary speeches, no glass of Lithuanian
Chiraz pressed into his hands by the office temp together
with a humorous leaving card featuring an old man with
trousers at half mast. The words walk the plank had
hovered over the conversation conversation. Conversation would imply a batting
(15:23):
of balls back and forth, but the only balls being
batted had been his own. He remembered the savage satisfaction
in M's eyes. They had never got on, not since
Q had testified at a Joint Intelligence Committee hearing on
the dangers of AI deployment within Britain's defense infrastructure, exposing
the fact that the then prospective m knew as much
about artificial intelligence as she did the actual thing, as
(15:43):
in neither had ever had occasion to burden her gray matter.
Back in the bedroom, he sat down at his desk,
reached into a drawer and pulled out a plastic false
cap folder in neon orange. From though folder he extracted
a single item, a letter, handwritten, not actually a letter,
barely a handful of lines. The note for the note
was from Pete. If you're reading this, I'm dead. I
can't tell you everything. I don't have all of the
(16:05):
answers that would be your job should you choose to
come back. That's the inciting incident that gets Que to
return to his hometown, and he needs a project at
the time, because, as I said, he's all at sea.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I think that's it. You know what, It is a fabulous,
fabulous book, and you it is packed with sparkling asides,
wonderful wit, and a plot that just bounces along. It's like,
as I say, it's like you've suddenly learned how to write.
It's impressive.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Well, I'm really pleased because, as you may know, earlier
this week I was signing signing lots of copies in
readiness for the launch, and it is a beautiful looking hardback.
I mean, I can't take any credit for it, but
the publishers have done an amazing job with the design.
There's lots of lovely silver foil for the title, and
it's a beautiful red cover, very christmasy. I mean, there's
(17:00):
various special editions available as well to order. I should stay.
Waterston's have got their own one with sprayed edges and
lovely beautiful end papers. And Goldsborough Book Books have a
blue edition signed, and you know that's got its own
sort of lovely silvery foil as well. And there's an
addition for independent booksellers with its own sprayed edges. So
do go in to your local bookseller if you want
(17:22):
to and pre order the book. Can I just read
you some of the lovely comments that our fellow crime
writers have made? Yes, these do these people even further
if they're not already convinced that they need a copy
of this book in their life, right, So Mick Heron,
Mick says, clever, cunning and quirky. Mister Mark Billingham says,
(17:42):
a cunning and propulsive thriller brimming with wit, and Cleaves says,
a wonderful novel, escapist and playful. And then we've got
Lee Child on the front saying, pay attention, double o seven.
This is a story we always wanted. And Charlie Higgson,
who perhaps captures exactly what I was trying to do.
Most of all, he says, an entertaining mashup of Fleming,
(18:04):
Le Carree and the best of British detective fiction.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And it is wonderful. It is absolutely wonderful. I would
chime in and just say, it's a tour deive force.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Right, well, thank you, my friend. But enough enough of
quantum of menace. Let's talk about a real life espionage case.
Would you like to know about the case of the
poison tipped umbrella?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I would, because it's wonderful. I remember this happening right
when we were kids.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, of course, because you are eighty and you were
probably thirty.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Year Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm
younger than you, but I remember when this happened. So
tell us the story. Tell our audience who may not
know the story, because it is a story involving Bulgarians,
Bulgarian Bulgarians, I believe it is.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Indeed, So this is the story of the assassination of
a Bulgarian dissident named Georgie even of Markov. So let
me tell you a little bit about this chat before
we go into his actual Killie so Georgi Markov. He
was born in nineteen twenty nine in Sofia and the
(19:12):
capital city of Bulgaria, and to begin with his career
was quite the day. He studied chemistry and went on
to become a chemical engineer, and that is probably what
inspired his first book, because his first book, which was
published in nineteen fifty seven, was a novel called The
Night of Caesium. Now, it's quite difficult to find any
(19:33):
details about what this book is actually about, but caesion
is a is a metal, right, It's a soft, silvery
gold like alkali metal, and I can't imagine that that
would be the focus of this pot boiler. So I
can only guess at what the book might actually have
been about. So you know, but it sold well, and
(19:57):
so his career as a novelist was off to a
good start. And then he published several other books, The
IAX Winners in nineteen fifty nine, a couple of collections
of short stories. But as he was doing so, as
he was doing so, his fiction began to take potshots
at the regime, because what we have to remember is
that Bulgaria at this time was the People's Republic of Bulgaria,
(20:22):
because from nineteen forty six to nineteen ninety Bulgaria was
a communist state very much modeled on the Soviet Union,
adopting similar policies to the Soviet Union and transforming itself
into that kind of nation. And of course mister Markov
(20:42):
was not very pleased about that, and so he began
to take potshots. And these potshots were noticed by the
Bulgarian intelligence servant services, and so he came onto their radar,
so much so that in nineteen sixty nine he was
forced to leave and he ended up in Italy for
a bit, and then he thought that he would hang
around and then go back to Bulgaria, but he was
(21:04):
forced to change his mind because the Bulgarian government refused
to renew his passport, and that's when he ended up
in London and he learned English. It was very clever, chapid,
he learnt very very quickly, and in en he ended
up working for BBC's World Service, specifically for the Bulgarian desk,
and from there he decided to continue his anti communist
(21:27):
rantings by working for a German state funded TV network
called Deutscher Weller and then Radio Free Europe. And that's
where the trouble really began because Radio Free Europe, also
known as Radio Liberty, was backed by the Americans, and
so the Bulgarians government didn't really like what he was
(21:49):
saying through these various channels, and so they decided to
sentence him in in his absence, to six years and
six months in prison as defector. And there was a
big hooha in Bulgaria. His his books, whether they were
they were about soft metals or not, were we're drawn
from libraries and bookshops. And his name was his name
(22:12):
was stricken practically from the record from all Bulgarian media.
And of course it goes darker than that. The Bulgarian
secret Service opened a file on him and they gave
him a lovely code name. They called him the Wonderer,
the Wanderer, and the Wonderer.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
He goes around around around sorry to carry on, and
who sang that?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I can't remember who sang that?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Its quote? Wasn't it the quote?
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I can't remember? I don't know. Yeah, But he got,
but it wouldn't It didn't stop him from getting up
to mischief because he wrote, He wrote plays, and he
wrote the play in Edinburgh called Archangel Michael. He wrote
a novel called The Right Honorable Chimpanzee co written with
someone called David Phillips, was only published after his death,
(23:01):
so you know he kept active. But because of his
constant critiquing of the communist regime in Bulgaria, and because
he was quite a sarcastic chap, they decided I guess
at some point that enough was enough. And so on
September seventh, nineteen seventy eight, as Georgie was walking across
(23:26):
Waterloo Bridge in London, of course, and he was waiting
for a bus to take him to his offices at
the BBC, he felt a sharp pain on the back
of his right thigh, which he thought was an insect
bite or sting at first, and he turned around and
he saw this man picking an umbrella off the ground
(23:46):
before wandering off. And later, while he was at work
at BBC World Service offices, he noticed a little pimple
forming at the site of the sting, and the pain
began to increase an increase, and wouldn't go away, and
so he developed a fever, later admitted to Saint James
(24:06):
Hospital in Balin, and four days later he was dead
at the age of forty nine. Oh well, my friend,
what do you think of that?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
It was scary? And you know what, it's sort of
set a precedent, didn't it. Carry on? Carry on, tell us,
tell us what happened.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Okay, So you have these sort of poignant stories of
what happened. So there's a doctor called Dr Bernard Riley
who was working the night shift at Saint James Hospital
that day and he was given a handover when Georgie
came in and he reports that someone said to him, oh,
(24:47):
by the way, there's some nutter in cubicle three who
says he's been shot by the KGB. Because initially Georgie
Mark thought that he'd been shot rather than than poisoned.
And then when he examined markof Dr Riley, he says,
I will never forget it. He said, I have been
poisoned by the KGB and there is absolutely nothing you
(25:09):
can do, quite sad. And in the end they discovered,
of course that it was rice in poison. Now what
do you know about ricin poison?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Didn't they use that in Japan? Wasn't there like a
cult that used ricin to murder a lot of people
on the underground the subway there?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
They may well have been. It's very very potent, it is, indeed.
But let me tell you something hugely interesting about ricin.
So ricin is a toxin that's produced in the seeds
of the castor oil plant. Yes, the same plant that
gives us castor oil. Do you know what castor oil
(25:48):
is good for?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Isn't it for making you throw up? Maybe that's the link.
Maybe it's because it makes you throw up because or
does it soothe your stomach? What does it do?
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well? Castor oil apparently is very very good as a laxative.
So the next time you're buned up there you go
get some time unbunned up.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
I shall remember that castor oil it is.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
It's also very very good for hair and skin, so
you know, if you I mean, it might explain your
amazing head of hair, thank you. So he died of
rising poisoning, and the police went to work, and they
carried out an extensive investigation, and they came up with
a few suspects, but they never really apprehended anybody for
(26:29):
the crime. So do you want to hear the chief
suspect in the murder of Georgi Markov? Yes, I do, Okay.
So they reckon that the chief suspect was a Bulgarian
intelligence operative I an assassin named Francesco Huilino, who was
known by his code name Agent Picker Dilly, What a
(26:52):
great name. Scotland Yard reckoned that he was there, He
was the culprit. But he remained free his whole life
until he died in twenty twenty one. And they reckon
and these are these are somebody else's words. They reckon.
He was a master in infiltration. He could go into
any kind of environment and become the person he wanted to.
(27:14):
People around him die, and he is like a shadow.
He just moves on. It just sounds a lot like that.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
It does sound a lot like me. People die wherever
I go, and I just move on, move and right on.
They call me Agent Old Kent Road.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Anyway. So Markov's murder, of course, has been enshrined in law.
And of course we know that spy writers have borrowed
that kind of idea of oh.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I mean to be murdered by an umbrella and a
poison injecting umbrella. It's pretty impressive, except it was a projectile,
wasn't It was this very small projectile that it fired
at his leg because they found it, didn't they They
actually found the projectile with the hole in it that
let the poison in. So that's it. It's an amazing story,
(28:06):
the fact that people would do that in London, and
then it's echoed, you know, several decades later by all
the poisoning of that x KGB agent. I forgot his name,
and there was two. There was one in London, and
then there was one out in Salisbury.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Wasn't there? Indeed?
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And I guess it's it's it's part of the course
now for intelligence agencies around the world to carry out
these kind of kind of assassinations. Have you have you
ever been jabbed in the ass by an umbrella? Got
a very big ass of good big target umbrella. What
have you been jabbed in the bottom by? Then?
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Oh, God, loads of things, but not an umbrella. That
would be that would be uncalled for.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I'm quite nervous to ask when you say loads of
things have have jabbed you in the bottom? You know
what I'm.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
CAPTI needles. Yeah, injection when I was a kid. Do
you never get an injection in the bottom when you
were a kid?
Speaker 1 (29:03):
I can't remember rhino horn when you were buying rhinos.
I mean, did a rhino.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Not that I recall. I mean there was a lot
of alcohol consumed, so it is possible, but I do
not recall being jabbed up the ass by a rhino.
I apologize for my lack of clarity on that matter.
I must say that that, you know, the story of
Georgian Markoff is one of my favorite espionage stories. You know,
(29:34):
it speaks. It is pure James Bond stuff right. Indeed,
it's truth stranger than fiction there.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Is and and the coda to that is is quite poignant.
He's actually buried in the UK. He's not buried in
back in Bulgaria. He is. His grave can be can
be viewed. It's in a small churchyard at the Church
of Saint Candida and Holy Cross in can Nonicorum. Endorse it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Okay, that's interesting talking about odd places. Now, your place
that you have created in this novel which turn on
the water? Is that supposed to be in the Cotswolds?
Where is it exactly tell.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Us, No, it's in the Home Counties. It's just a
couple of hours out out of London, because I wanted
it to be close enough for Q to come back
to London where he has an actual house, and as
you know, some of the action takes place in London.
When he comes to he tracked down a little bit
more about what quantum computers actually are and what they
might be used for. So he comes to University College
(30:37):
London is my neck of the woods, and he meets
some scientists and talks about that, and of course he
decides to barge back in on m I six to
try and get some information there. But of course he's
now persona non grata. So that makes for a very
compelling couple of couple of chapters.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Well, it's wonderful. I must say. It's one of the
best things that I've read in a while.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
And I'm loving it, and I am loving you for
loving it.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Ah. Well, on that amorous bombshell, I think we should finish.
I think, ladies and gentlemen, I must say, when when
is it out again? Twenty third?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
So it's out this week, Quantum of Menace. Do get
your pre orders in, Do get your orders in, Do
go into your bookshops on the day, Do tell your
friends about it, Do buy it for Christmas. I would
be eternally grateful.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I shall do all of those things.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So will our readers, listeners, listeners, So will our listeners.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have enjoyed this podcast, please
do go out and buy pre order slight, line up
and wait for the shops to open. You know, order
your copy of this book, The Quantum of Menace. It
is fabulous. I don't often use the word fabulous in
(31:55):
the context of my good friend, but this time it
is justified. So please do go ahead.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
I should say that for those who enjoy an audiobook,
we've got none other than Alexander Armstrong who has read
the audiobook. He and I've listened to him, and he's
absolutely nailed it. He's absolutely embodied the queue that I
have created and all of the other wonderful characters in
the book. So thank you to Alexander.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Well, that is amazing. Linden and gentlemen, if you've enjoyed
the episode, please do leave a review on your favorite
podcast app, and please do spread the word. Mister Kahn
if we were to be secret agents, what would our
code names be?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Double OH minus one and double OW minus two and.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
On that arithmetically incomprehensible bombshell. Lidies and gentlemen, we have
been your friends. The Red Hot Chinley Writers on Murder
Junction
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