Introducing… Codename Hirondelle
My forthcoming novel, Codename Hirondelle, is set between 1938 and 1949, and follows the adventures of Jack Rambler, an SOE agent operating behind enemy lines in World War 2, and Ruth Tyler, a police sergeant in the Lake District. The novel is my tribute to the children’s adventure stories I read when I was growing up.
In the 60s and 70s, I read a lot of the children’s classics, beginning with Enid Blyton’s The Secret Seven (starting 1949), and the Adventure series (starting 1944). Then I devoured Hugh Walters’ science fiction classics including Blast Off at Woomera (1957), and Mission to Mercury (1965), before graduating to Arthur C Clarke’s Islands in the Sky (1952), Childhood’s End (1953), A Fall of Moondust (1961) and of course Rendezvous with Rama (1973), which was unusual in being fairly recent when I read it. I remember lending Childhood’s End to Michael Kent, who lived down the road, which would have been the summer of 1976, probably, when I was 13 and about to start secondary school. Michael went to a different school, so I never got the book back.
But my absolute favourite children’s books, then and always, were the Swallows and Amazons series, which I characteristically started by reading the second book, Swallowdale (1931), followed by my all-time favourite Winter Holiday (1933). I was taken to see the 1974 film, which I also loved, and I developed a crush on Kit Seymour, who played Nancy Blackett. Nancy was always my favourite character. (One of the great disappointments of my life was how sick I felt the first time I was on a boat. I’ve got no sea legs at all. Thus went my dreams of learning to sail.)
Suffice it to say, I devoured a lot of children’s adventure books, and whether the children were going into space, or foiling smugglers on secret islands, or messing about on boats, I just couldn’t get enough of those stories.
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Then came Declare (2001), which my favourite book I have read as an adult. Through Declare, I was introduced to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which in Tim Powers’ hands becomes a fugitive organisation, still existing when it was supposed to be abolished, and undertaking ever-more esoteric operations.
There is something doomed and romantic about the SOE and its agents. So much of what they did in WW2 ended in failure or obscurity, hidden away in secret files. And yet, when it came to disrupting the enemy after D-Day and – with the Resistance – hampering their efforts to mount a defence, their contribution was probably immense. Blowing bridges and railway yards, sabotaging vehicles, delaying troop transports and waging guerrilla warfare. The very secrecy surrounding the organisation meant that people just didn’t know what it did — or even that it existed, or that many of the agents were women. It’s said that Hitler spent half an hour every day being briefed on the latest (suspected) SOE activities. It’s also the case that the Resistance was vital in restoring French national pride and spirit, and the Resistance was bolstered and bankrolled by SOE.
Which brings me back to Codename Hirondelle, my tribute to those children’s adventures I read as a kid—and the SOE. My protagonist, Jack Rambler, is about 20 years old in 1938, but his childhood spent playing spy games and pirates have prepared him for life as an SOE agent. The book covers three stories in three different times and places.
Westmorland, 1949. Someone is mutilating livestock on the fells. Who would do such a horrible thing? Ruth Tyler, a police sergeant based in Ambleside, needs to speak to the fly camper in a hidden valley…
London, 1938. For Jack Rambler, a boyhood of coded messages, daring expeditions, and the art of disappearing was child’s play. Now these very skills unexpectedly propel him into the clandestine world of espionage and his first mission: to infiltrate an occult society with links to Nazi Germany…
France, 1943. On a secret airfield near Belfort, an SOE radio operator waits to meet her new handler, an agent flying in from RAF Tempsford with instructions to trust nobody…
His codename is Hirondelle…
Publication date: 27 June 2025. Kindle is available for pre-order. Paperback will be available on release day.
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