Black Bear: Peter Cotton Thriller 4: The fourth fast-paced spy thriller

(Paperback)

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From the author of ICELIGHT, winner of the 2012 Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award, BLACK BEAR is the fourth in the critically acclaimed Peter Cotton series following the fortunes of British spy Peter Cotton as he navigates the treacherous uncertainties of the post-war world. For all fans of John le Carre, Robert Harris, Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.

Sent to Manhattan as part of the British effort to build intelligence into the new United Nations Organisation 'from the foundations up', Agent Peter Cotton wakes up in the Ogden Clinic on East 76th Street, a private facility reserved for very special patients and veterans.

He is told he was found badly bruised, slumped in a doorway, and that he had been injected with at least three 'truth-drugs'. He is lucky to be alive.

Plagued by vertigo, colour blindness and tunnel vision, and unable to be certain what is real and what hallucinatory, Cotton must piece together what has happened to him, find out who is responsible and why. What he discovers is even more unsettling. His biggest uncertainty - why he has been allowed to live

Reviews

Confirms Aly Monroe's genius for creating such tension that, while nothing much happens, you don't want things to stop not happening. She's commercial writing's rarest beast - a gloriously defiant individualist - Daily Telegraph

Monroe is terrific at evoking this world - Guardian

Monroe creates the atmosphere of the time brilliantly . . . an original novel and its people and places are so well described that I was gripped from start to finish - Literary Review

A wonderfully atmospheric book - Euro Crime

Once again, Monroe's research is spot on and she paints her supporting cast with so many shades of grey that it makes a John Le Carre novel look positively straightforward. This is wonderfully atmospheric - Shots Magazine

Dodgy underhand dealings, political manipulations as well as a labyrinth of twists and turns... Definitely an author to watch - Falcata Times

Riveting stuff - The Times

The stately pace and avuncular tone belie Monroe's capacity to generate tension and momentum from the most innocuous of incidents, and the political context deliberately foreshadows more famous incidents in the cold-war years ahead, as former allies - Britain, Russia and the US - jockey for position in the post-war years - Irish Times

Author Bio

Aly Monroe was born and educated in England. Trained in linguistics, she has lived abroad - mostly in Spain - and speaks several languages. She is married and has three children. The first three books in the Peter Cotton series, Maze of Cadiz and Washington Shadow and Icelight (shortlisted for the 2012 Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award) are also available from John Murray. You can find out more about Peter Cotton and Aly Monroe via her website, www.alymonroe.com or at www.johnmurray.co.uk, through her official facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/Monroe.Aly, and you can follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/monroe_aly.