Rosemary Hayes – Spying in the early 19th century

I’m delighted to welcome Rosemary Hayes to my writing blog today as part of her book tour organised by the Coffee Pot Book Club. She’s written over fifty books for children and young adults. She writes in different genres from edgy teenage fiction, historical fiction, middle grade fantasy to chapter books for early readers and texts for picture books. Many of her books have won or been shortlisted for awards and several have been translated into different languages.

Rosemary has travelled widely but now lives in South Cambridgeshire. She has a background in publishing, having worked for Cambridge University Press before setting up her own company Anglia Young Books which she ran for some years. She has been a reader for a well-known authors’ advisory service and runs creative writing workshops for both children and adults.

Rosemary has now turned her hand to adult fiction and her historical novel ‘The King’s Command’ is about the terror and tragedy suffered by a French Huguenot family during the reign of Louis XIV. Traitor’s Game, the first book in the Soldier Spy trilogy set during the Napoleonic Wars, has recently been published.

Over to Rosemary to tell us all about 19th century spying!

When I was asked to write a series of novellas set during the Napoleonic Wars, I decided to concentrate on the secret war against Napoleon. That underbelly of every war where agents pass information to their handlers through secret channels, where things are not always what they seem, where the most unlikely people turn out to be working for the enemy. So, the work of spies is the main focus of my stories.

There was a network of Royalist spies in France collaborating with the British Government and which organised uprisings against the Republic which were brutally suppressed by the Minister of Police, Joseph Fouché. There were several attempts to assassinate Napoleon, one of which very nearly succeeded. It was the world’s first car bomb (or cart bomb). Britain was closely involved in the plot, which was almost certainly controlled from London.

The plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise, an assassination attempt on the life of the First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, in Paris on 24 December 1800 (Public domain)

Although there was high level espionage, there were also many ordinary French citizens, including fishing families, shopkeepers and others who wished to undermine Napoleon’s rule.

Then there were those who regularly crossed the Channel, legally, spying for their country’s enemies in plain sight. And, of course, there were double agents, too, one of whom is the mysterious traitor mentioned in my story.

Spies were active in every theatre of war but this first story of my trilogy is set only in France and England. Inevitably, both smugglers and fishermen (often one and the same) were involved in helping spies. At one point there was a spying headquarters in Jersey and one Jersey fisherman made nearly 200 trips over to France delivering spies, letters and money; he was eventually caught and executed but never revealed the names of his contacts.

Smuggling had always taken place along the South coast of England, too, and it was rife during the Napoleonic wars when contraband was taken both ways across the Channel as were spies and escaped prisoners of war. Hastings had a long tradition of smuggling and many of the fishing families augmented their incomes with smuggling activities. As part of my research I visited St Clement’s Caves, a large network of caves in Hastings where contraband was concealed and from where boats set off across to France.

The Alien Office, based in London, was the first comprehensive British secret service in the modern sense, and therefore the forerunner of not only the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) but also of MI5 and MI6. Although ostensibly part of the Home Office, the wider remit of The Alien Office included the domestic and external surveillance of foreign people of interest. John Reeves (one of the real people who appears in my story) was head of the Alien Office from 1803-1814 and had a network of agents who sent information back to their handlers. Messages were often written in code and/or in special inks to try and ensure that their contents would not be revealed should they be intercepted. Each intelligence agency had its own ciphers and ink composition.

For information on the spies and their networks, I consulted Tim Clayton’s excellent and extensively researched book ‘This Dark Business – The Secret War Against Napoleon. And, of course, Tom Williams’ series – the James Burke books. I’ve also visited the Hastings caves and been to Portugal and seen where Napoleon and Wellington had their headquarters at one time, staring at each other across the River Douro.

This, then, is the background to the first book in the Soldier Spy stories, Traitor’s Game, and in it we meet Will Fraser, bitter, disgraced and desperate to clear his name. In London he seeks out his brother, Jack, only to find that Jack has vanished and, in order to track him down, Will reluctantly becomes entangled in the murky world of espionage.
Would any of these methods of spying be relevant today? The advance of technology has obviously made everything more sophisticated but, in essence, has the sort of person recruited to spy for his or her country changed?

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Connect with Rosemary
Website: www.rosemaryhayes.co.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HayesRosemary
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rosemary-Hayes/e/B00NAPAPZC
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What’s Traitor’s Game about?

1808. Captain Will Fraser has just returned from the Front in the Peninsular War. He is disgraced and penniless, the victim of a conspiracy led by a jealous and influential officer. Falsely accused of insubordination and cowardice, he’s been dismissed from his regiment.

Fraser and Duncan Armstrong, his wounded sergeant, arrive in London to seek out Will’s brother, Jack, who works for King George’s Government.

But Jack has disappeared. No-one has seen him since he vanished from his lodgings a week ago. Friends and colleagues are baffled by his disappearance as is the young woman, Clara, who claims to be his wife.

Will is viciously attacked, seemingly mistaken for his brother, and only just escapes with his life. When news of this reaches Jack’s colleagues in government, Will is recruited to find his brother. He and Armstrong set out to follow a trail littered with half-truths and misinformation.

For their task is not quite what it seems.

Will closely resembles his brother and it becomes evident that he is being used as a decoy to flush out Jack’s enemies. These are enemies of the state, for Jack Fraser is a spy and his colleagues believe he has uncovered evidence which will lead to the identity of a French spymaster embedded in the British Government.

Will’s search leads him to France but in this murky world of espionage, nothing is straightforward. The soldier turned spy must unmask a traitor, before it’s too late.

Buy this book here:
Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/bwwEee
Also available on #KindleUnlimited

My thoughts

A cracking story! Hero Will caught my attention immediately. He refuses to wallow in self-pity although I think he has plenty of grounds to do so. He knows he’s been treated unfairly but he refuses to complain even though his career has been peremptorily ended.  We see how Will copes with street danger, a deeply emotional encounter with his brother’s wife whom he has loved since childhood, and the world of trickery, danger and slippery characters.

The period detail is rich and authentic, not only in the description of the London he lands in, but the practical side of life like washing, watching the pennies  and renting a room. You walk through the street with Will and his sidekick, Armstrong, and see it as it is in vivid detail. The secondary characters, from actresses to the powerful, are deftly drawn.

The author handles the plot well, with good pacing. I held my breath several times! Although shorter than a standard novel, it’s an excellent read and I will be looking forward to the next episode, crossing my fingers that such an honourable, courageous hero.

The story is so good that I hesitate to mention that there are some editing issues. However, that is the responsibility of the publisher and should be remedied. I hope the next Will Fraser adventure is served better – the character certainly merits better treatment.

Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers –  INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO,  AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO  and RETALIO,  and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories.  Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA,  Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.