A FORMER editor who worked on newspapers in Rugby and Warwickshire will be celebrating the release of his new thriller at the town’s inaugural literary festival this weekend.
Michael Davies, who worked for the Rugby Times and Stratford Herald during a 20-year career in newspapers, will be the special guest at an event on Sunday afternoon at the Percival Guildhouse.
He will be interviewed by former Observer editor Richard Howarth and take questions from the audience.
The free event is a late addition to the Rugby Literary Festival – which runs from tomorrow (Friday October 18) to Sunday – and will take place at the St Matthews Street venue from 3-4pm.
A former resident of Long Buckby, Michael switched to writing fiction after leaving newspapers in 2002.
His new novel, Thin Ice, is the latest instalment in a trilogy featuring the protagonist Bill Kemp – described by bestselling author Jeffrey Deaver as ‘part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe and all hero’.
Pre-publication copies will be exclusively available at the event courtesy of Rugby’s independent Hunt’s Bookshop.
After subjecting Kemp to a host of trials in the Australian desert with his last book, Outback, Davies now transports him to central Europe at the height of the Cold War, where Kemp is introduced to the dark arts of espionage on the front line of the Iron Curtain.
A lifelong fan of bestselling thriller writer Desmond Bagley, Michael celebrates the author’s legacy with this all-new adventure featuring his protagonist Kemp.
Michael, who completed Bagley’s first Kemp novel Domino Island for publication nearly 40 years after the author’s death before creating Outback in 2023, now spins another original tale of danger and daring.
He said: “It’s been a real pleasure putting Bill through a new set of challenges – physical, mental and ethical – in an environment that’s very different from his last adventure.
“I really wanted to put a toe in the water of spy thrillers, and the 1970s setting allowed me to explore some of the rich territory that people like John Le Carré and Len Deighton wrote so brilliantly – as well as Bagley himself, of course.”
Since leaving newspapers, Michael has written for the stage, screen, print and online. His debut play won a national playwriting competition, and subsequent work includes the book and lyrics for Tess – The Musical, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which had a workshop production at the RSC’s Other Place in Stratford.
The novel is released by HarperCollins on October 24, with paperback, ebook and audio editions all available for pre-order.
