Graveyard of Spies - Book Tour and Giveaway

An Espionage Novel of Iran

Graveyard of Spies
by James Quinn
Genre: Espionage Thriller, Suspense

​An MI6 network betrayed.
A spy on the run.
A Father’s hunt for the truth.

David Harkness, retired MI6 field agent and once a top operative in Tehran, has been out of the espionage game for decades. Now living in self-imposed exile in Barcelona, he has cut himself off from the cloak-and-dagger world he once knew.

But when a contact from his past tells him that his daughter has gone missing in Iran, David is plunged back into a world of conspiracy, double-cross and espionage.

Set during the maelstrom of 1970’s Pre-Revolutionary Iran and the modern terrorism war between East and West, James Quinn’s Graveyard of Spies is a thrilling story of one man’s quest to discover the truth and protect what he loves the most - no matter what the cost.
 
“A spy thriller with heart and soul.”

“What a terrific addition to the spy genre”

“If you like political thrillers, you'll love this one. Once again, James Quinn has penned a terrific tale.”

“An emotionally driven spy story”
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“James Quinn continues to show he can really, really write!”
 
 
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Iran, 1977 -1978

The moment my feet touched down on Iranian soil I knew that I was home.  I could feel it, taste it, and smell it.  It permeated my very soul.  I knew because I had never felt that way about anywhere else in the world in all of my twenty-six years.  And who was I to make this definitive proclamation?
I was David Richard Harkness, a twenty-six-year-old newspaper journalist/photographer, linguist frequent traveller and spy.  I had embraced the ethos and style of 1977; my hair was longish in length, dark (the grey of my future self had not yet taken root), I was slim, fit and looked like a hundred other young war photographers in the world in the non-uniform uniformity of jeans, sneakers, open-neck shirt and the sometime addition of a leather jacket.  Occasionally, I would wear a lightweight summer suit for more formal occasions, hoping that I looked Graham Greene-esque, and always open-necked and never with a tie.  The hope was that it would give me an edgy, dangerous feel to my persona.  In truth it probably didn’t, but it was all I had.
And now, after a yearlong recruitment and training drive, I was the latest off-the-books field agent for British Intelligence in the Near East.  I had initially been spotted, I later learned, just fresh out of university, not one of the prestigious ones that the high-level Intelligence Officers came from; no Eton or Oxford for me.  Instead, I had graduated from Bath with a very respectable degree in Journalism and Languages, which in this case was Farsi.
I had always wanted to write, ever since I was a little boy, and being naturally inquisitive I had an investigative nature.  I would wander around our little village on the outskirts of Bath with my notepad and pen, alternatively drawing or writing made-up stories.  My mother encouraged me, my father did not, until it had burst at the seams and I had impressed everyone at grammar school with my literary prowess.  It was only a matter of time before I decided what I wanted to do with my life in the future – in short, write!  I was taken on as a cub reporter for a local rag before hitting the big leagues of the London papers, mainly thanks to my language skills, and being sent overseas as a stringer in Beirut, eking out a living filing copy and selling photographs to the European dailies for a pittance.
Beirut was going through something of a rough time after its heyday in the 1960s, when it was known as the ‘Paris of the Orient’.  Now, it was a tense environment with civil war and terrorism looming over the streets.  But for a young war photographer it was a goldmine of experiences!
And it was in Beirut at the end of my first ‘tour’ that I was approached by a Consulate flunky who hinted he ‘vaguely had something to do with gathering information’.   We had met several times in the hotel bars and he was a face known to most of the journalist crowd and there was nothing nudge, nudge, wink, wink about any of it.  I was just in the right place at the right time.
I had spent the best part of year being trained at arm’s length, usually in hotel rooms or safe houses, in the dark arts of agent handling, recruitment and tradecraft.  I was a deniable, not officially on the books of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, but rather someone who was paid from an offshore shell company and who could be trusted to do the odd little job here and there when the local Head of Station couldn’t risk it.   Crash recruitment, source handling, all the bells and whistles of tradecraft, bit of surveillance here and there, were all within my remit as a ‘non-official contract operative’  – or, as the trade called us, ‘Blow-ins’.  I was a part-time spy.
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**Join the Spy Games Treasure Hunt!!**
 
WELCOME TO JAMES QUINN’S SPY GAMES
 
Do you have an investigative mind?  Can you solve puzzles?
Do you think you have what it takes to be a secret agent?
If the answer is YES – then join our spy game and win a prize.

Over the next several months we will be leaving clues on our website that will lead you to a prize located in several geographical locations around the globe.

The prizes will be left in our carefully selected Dead Letter Box Drops.  For espionage aficionados knowing what a DLB is should be a prerequisite. A knowledge of general espionage history is also useful but not necessarily a must.

If you choose to accept this mission, then protocol dictates that you should check in on our website and social media for the latest clue updates. Links can be found in the author’s bio following this post!

The first location will be announced in late November followed a few days later by the clues needed to find the DLB.

Good luck to all the fledgling secret agents taking part.
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James Quinn is the author of the "Gorilla Grant" series of spy novels including A Game for Assassins, Berlin Reload and the novella Gorilla Warfare which is currently being developed as a Hollywood movie.   He has also written the spy story The Fisherman and the short story anthology Clandestine.
 
A professional intelligence and security consultant, he currently resides in the UK but likes to travel extensively around the globe; partly to research his books and partly for the adventure of it all!
 
In his spare time he likes to play the drums, learn the guitar and enjoy the finer things in life.
 
Visit the official James Quinn author website for more information about upcoming projects and events;
 

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​​Inspiration of a Story
 
My new novel, Graveyard of Spies, is a book that is very dear to me and close to my heart.
 
It came at a cross roads in my life where I was being pulled and pushed in lots of different directions.  When I survived the pushing and pulling I was determined to let the story be known as best I could.
 
The story is set predominantly in and around Iran and flits from the 1970’s to the mid noughties.  It is the story of the Iranian people and how they have survived in the political and religious turmoil since the ‘79 revolution.  At the time I was in touch with and working with Iranian exiles that had fled the country over the past forty years.  I heard their stories.  I listened in horror to what they had endured.  It was humbling.  This was a story that needed to be told, I thought.
 
Of course all of this would be told through the prism of espionage.   I’m not a history writer, and to try and describe the political machinations of Iran and the West would have taken up several volumes and would need to be written by a better historian than I ever could be.  But what I could do was tell a tale that was carried on the back of a spy story to make it more accessible to readers.
 
But if Iran and its people were the broad canvas, the finer details of the story would centre around a father and the search for his daughter.  Fundamentally Graveyard of Spies is the story of how far you would go to protect and save the most important thing in your life.  It is about family.  It is about the relationship between a father and his child and how they both change as the story unfolds.
 
I hope you enjoy the book, it is from my heart and soul.

Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!
​​ 
Nov 7
kickoff at Silver Dagger Book Tours
Book Review Virginia Lee Blog
Bedazzled By Books
Book Bites....with a side of coffee
Scrupulous Dreams
Trixie Reports Books
 
Nov 8
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Nov 9
M.C.V. EGAN ❧Defining Ways❧
Insane Books
Royally Insane Books
 
Nov 10
Books all things paranormal and romance
Craving Lovely Books
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Nov 11
Laurie Woodward: An Author Promoting Peace Creatively
ⒾⓃⓉⓇⓄⓈⓅⒺⒸⓉⒾⓋⒺ ⓅⓇⒺⓈⓈ ASTROLOGY
Momma Says: To Read or Not to Read
My beauty my books
Stormy Nights Reviewing & Bloggin'
 
Nov 12
Haley Cavanagh Books
Book Reviews by the Reluctant Retiree
☼  A Place In The  Spotlight ☼  with M.C.V. EGAN
C.A.Milson
Sylv.net
 
Nov 13
J.M. Northrup
All The Write Stuff
Wine Cellar Library
Country Mamas With Kids
The Bookshelf Fairy
 
Nov 14
Webs and Blogs For Writers
Celticlady's Reviews
Midnight Book Reader
The Book Dragon
Twisted Book Ramblings
 

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