Available Formats
The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer
By (Author) Ulrik Skotte
Ebury Publishing
W H Allen
18th August 2024
11th July 2024
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
True crime
Politics and government
364.152
Hardback
336
Width 160mm, Height 242mm, Spine 31mm
558g
A revealing, page-turning story of the most iconic Cold War spy killing of all time, for fans of Ben Macintyre, Henry Hemming and the novels of John Le Carre and Mick Herron. September 1978- exiled Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is murdered in broad daylight on Waterloo Bridge, London with a poison-tipped umbrella. It would become the most infamous unsolved killing of the Cold War. Many years later, young journalist Ulrik Skotte is approached with explosive new information about a man alleged to be responsible for Markov's death - a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service. This one meeting would launch Skotte into a hunt for the killer lasting more than a quarter of a century, bringing him face-to-face with eccentric conspiracy theorists, a washed-up former dictator, ageing Danish spooks - and, ultimately, with Agent Piccadilly himself. Drawing on an incredible cache of original documents, interviews and archive material, The Umbrella Murder provides jaw-dropping answers to a question that has persisted for nearly five decades- who killed Georgi Markov And who has been protecting the assassin ever since
Ulrik Skotte is a Danish journalist who has been chasing the truth about the umbrella murder and the mysterious agent Piccadilly for more than 25 years. He eventually managed to track down Piccadilly and met him face to face in an apartment in Austria in 2021. A month later, Piccadilly was found dead in the same apartment. Ulrik Skotte lives in Copenhagen and owns the TV company Doceye, which produces documentaries for the Scandinavian and European markets.