Espionage Aficionados discussion

Hi fellow espionage aficionados,

Introducing my recently released novel, Magical Disinformation. I lived in Colombia for 4 years and have used that experience as inspiration for my book.

Magical Disinformation: a spy action-thriller with a satirical edge set amongst the Colombian peace process. Described by one reviewer as “Our Man in Havana meets A Clear and Present Danger.”

Blurb
Oliver Jardine is a spy in Colombia, enamoured with local woman Veronica Velasco. As the Colombian government signs a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, Her Majesty’s government decides a transfer is in order to focus on more pertinent theatres of operation. In a desperate attempt to remain in Colombia, Jardine begins to fabricate his intelligence reports. But the consequences soon take on a life of their own. In the era of ‘fake news’ in the land of magical realism, fiction can be just as dangerous as the truth.

Book and Author Links

The ebook is currently $4.99 USD (please see links below) or also available in paperback through your preferred online store (links to a few on my author website below). Your local independent bookstores should be able to order a copy in as well. I've provided the first chapter below as a sample to see if you might like it!

Author Website - https://www.LachlanPageAuthor.com

Amazon US - https://www.amazon.com/Magical-Disinf...

Amazon UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Magical-Disi...


Sample Chapter

Andean Visions
It was when stumbling down the rain-soaked Andes wearing a woollen poncho, a handwoven sombrero, and high on ayahuasca that Oliver Jardine decided to lie for love. The lying wouldn’t be hard, he was a spy after all. Spying and lying formed part of his bread and butter, or as it had come to be in Colombia, his arepa y queso. Lying came as easy as breathing in the misty mountain air, as he drifted down a muddy track towards the warm glow of Bogotá.
If the lying flowed through his veins like a fast moving river, the motivation of his love induced fibs didn’t. It froze him stiff with a guilt much like the drizzling rain filled his boots with icy rainwater, turning his feet to bricks of ice, weighing him down both mentally and physically. The dormant mist of the bleak Andean moorlands didn’t help either. It hung in the air and slowly seeped into his soul bringing with it a dark cloud that hung low over his head.
It’s quite likely the coal-coloured cloud of dread would have accompanied him during his entire descent, if it weren’t for a hallucinogenic encounter he had witnessed under a giant ceiba tree. An event he still didn’t believe had happened, as the only man able to verify it disappeared into a sea of frailejones plants. He would’ve put the whole bizarre scene down to the mind-altering plant-based drugs he had consumed earlier in the evening, but the visions continued with him after that night. They allowed him to let go of his nagging internal analytical self and believe more in the only truly natural drug he had come to trust in a post-truth digital age: love.
In Colombia, they say love is a sickness, like cholera. Although if he thought about it, that theory wasn’t very romantic. A sickness that causes vomiting and rice-pudding-like diarrhoea? Let’s hope no-one gets that sick for love. No, that wasn’t the type of love he was feeling. Dangerous love? Yes, that was a much better fit. Dangerous love. That’s what rattled around his brain, as he scuffled along the path, the red brick buildings of Rosales coming into sight. It was this dangerous love that would compel him to lie against his own country’s interests, which in his case was particularly pertinent, considering he was an analyst for British Intelligence.
You see in spying for one’s country, the end is always clear and focused: national preservation. Most people think that means political assassinations, undercover sting operations, and influencing foreign elections. However, more often than not, it came down to: how does one acquire a particular piece of vital information? Information that, despite what the movies will tell you, is usually not very exciting. Take his recent intelligence report for example. In it he reports on the number of submarines Colombia owns. And do they need new, British-built submarines? And if so, how many? And if a lot, what is the government tender process like? The means – in such a situation – is the process to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of acquiring such information. Thus, it involves – necessarily, of course – trickery, deception, and a good dose of motivational psychology to convince people to give you the information you need. So, to get back to his initial worries, it wasn’t the means – the lying that is – that bothered him. What bothered him was he had decided to flip the whole concept on its own head. The end for him was love for a woman named Veronica Velasco. The means meant lying to Her Majesty’s Secret Service.