The Fulcrum Files
A Spy Thriller with a Twist of Romance and Mystery
Charismatic
The young, charismatic Ben Clayton was one of Britain’s brightest boxing prospects, until the day he slammed a left hook into a fragile chin. Sickened by the consequences he turned away from the ring, and found solace in the arms of the beautiful Lucy Kirk.
Hitler's Challenge
On the 7th March 1936, after almost two decades of peace in Europe, Hitler ordered the German Army back into the Rhineland. It was a direct challenge to Britain and France. Still unnerved by the slaughter of the Great War, the politicians wavered. The French Army stayed in its barracks, while the aristocratic British elite watched from their country retreats.
Knife Edge
History was balanced on a knife edge, and MI5's Fleming White knew that if the German challenge was ignored, Hitler's grip on power would harden like setting steel. The result would be a bigger, bloodier war for which Britain was not ready. It was an outcome that White would do anything to avoid.
Ruthless
The ruthless spymaster pushed his pawns around the board and soon just one man could make the difference between war and peace, victory or defeat. And that man was Ben Clayton. Thrown into the maelstrom of plot and counter-plot, into a world of mysteries, murder, spies and traitors, Ben must battle not just to survive, but to protect all that he loved and held most dear - Lucy.
The Fulcrum Files is historical fiction, a political spy thriller with a twist of romance and murder mystery - read the opening chapters now with the sample below.
The Fulcrum Files has topped the historical mystery and the thriller chart on Amazon.com.
Read the chapters in the PDF and then you'll want to buy the whole book - available for Kindle, iPad and many other ereaders from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Smashwords.com, BarnesandNoble.com, the iBookstore, Kobo, Diesel eBook Store, or at Sony's Reader Store.
Reviews
'This book satisfies sailing buffs, history fans, espionage addicts, and anyone else yearning for a good yarn.'
Nina Sankovitch, Huffington Post, Thanksgiving for 2012 Books Review
'What really impressed me though was the strong characterisation and plotting. It is rather complicated, but everything dovetails together very nicely at the end… Fans of David Downing or Alan Furst in particular should give this book a chance.'
Crime Fiction Lover
'With his riveting plotting and engaging characters, Chisnell provides a good read.'
Read All Day
'This is a well-researched historical thriller with romantic extras. The hero is a poor boy with a brain and the complex snobberies he encounters are sharply delineated. Two nicely contrasted heroines, lots of period detail and a touch of industrial strife thrown in. This is a big book, well-worth settling down to. I shall be looking out for more.'
Indie e-book review
'Once the “course” of the book was finally set, I was hooked. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore this amazing, fast paced story emerged before my very eyes and I couldn’t put it down… What you have is just another shining example of why Chisnell is an indie name to keep your eyes on.'
Kindle Obsessed
‘History, the sea, adventure, Romance and intrigue make for a good plot but the real measure is if you can put it down or not. I couldn’t and am looking forward to Mark’s next book for he has a new fan.’
Pete Goss
'Part Erskine Childers' Riddle of the Sands part John Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps, this has the potential to be a real classic - I read it in one sitting with just a brief break for my eyes.'
Gael Pawson, Yachts and Yachting
Writing The Fulcrum Files
I was in New Zealand to do interviews for the publication of The Wrecking Crew and one question kept coming up - why don't you write a novel about the America's Cup? I tried to explain that while the Kiwis had a minor obsession with the world's premier sailboat race, most of the rest of the world didn't even realise that they didn't care.
Larry Ellison, Russell Coutts and the other characters that inhabit the contemporary America's Cup world are interesting enough, but they aren't quite in the same league as the likes of T.O.M. Sopwith and Harold Vanderbilt. In the midst of the Great Depression and the rise to power of Hitler; Sopwith and Vanderbilt still managed to find the time and money to build and race the extraordinary J Class yachts. Not to mention altering the outcome of wars and changing the course of history...
Hold on.
It suddenly occurred to me... what about a story set in the milieu of that most dramatic, romantic and tumultuous era, the 1930s? I didn't begin it for quite a while as I was already half-way through another book, and while I knew the core historical story that I wanted to tell, it took a long time to figure out how I wanted to tell it.
Eventually, I decided to make the book's principal characters fictional, and set them amongst a handful of real - but peripheral - people, whose actions did not have to be much altered or invented to make my historical fiction mesh with reality. And I decided to make it a thriller - believe it or not, this started out closer to the romance genre.
First and foremost of the real characters is the aforementioned Sir Thomas Sopwith, as famous for the Sopwith Camel and Hurricane fighters as for his two challenges for the America's Cup. Chairman of the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company - a vast military aviation and engineering conglomerate - Sopwith was one of a handful of people that could afford the small fortune required to mount a Cup Challenge in the 1930s.
In those days, the America's Cup was not so much a yacht race (it still isn't) as a financial and technological battle of will between the elite of British and American society. The Cup was first won by the yacht America in 1851, after a race around the Isle of Wight. By 1935, fifteen successive 'Challengers' (mostly British, but the Canadians had also tried) had failed to wrest the Cup back from the New York Yacht Club's nominated 'Defender', in the one-on-one 'match race' format used.
It was Sir Thomas Sopwith's Endeavour that was defeated in 1934 in a highly controversial match against Harold S. Vanderbilt's Rainbow ('Britannia rules the waves, but America waives the rules,' had thundered one paper, and an American one at that). Sir Thomas was not settling for that result and by early-1936 - when the story of The Fulcrum Files opens - he already has a new boat in construction in Gosport, England.
During this time, Sopwith made some momentous decisions. I'm not going to tell you what they were here - you'll have to read the book - but suffice to say that they were more than enough to hang a thriller on.
Spoiler Alert...
While I'm not going to spoil the main plot for you, I know that part of my fascination with historical fiction is working out what's real and what's made up - so I thought I'd give you a couple of teaser points from all the research that I did to write the book. But even these could spoil your enjoyment of the story if you haven't read it - you have been warned.
The close association of the aero-industry to the world of yachting in the Solent area during the 1930s was genuine. Apart from Sopwith; Supermarine - builders of the Spitfire - had their offices and plant in Woolston on the Itchen in Southampton, and management kept a boat anchored on the river. The plane was tested at nearby Eastleigh airport.
Richard Fairey also built aeroplanes and owned and raced a J-class yacht. He did tentatively challenge for the America's Cup in the K Class, but the New York Yacht Club turned him down. He had an aircraft factory in Hamble and post-war it did much to raise the popularity of sailing as a mass participation sport thanks to the Firefly dinghy, which is still around today.
Sopwith might well have won the Cup in 1934 if it wasn't for a strike by many of his professional crew. They wanted a little more pay to make up for the late date of the Cup match, which meant that they would miss the beginning of the fishing season, losing their places on the boats. Sopwith refused to negotiate and took a largely amateur crew in their place - which many observers at the time believed to have made the difference in the 1934 Cup match.
There was also a female MI5 agent who worked undercover amongst the right-leaning elements of the British establishment. Joan Miller was partly responsible for the rounding up of a spy ring centred on the Russian Tea Rooms in Kensington. Her boss was Maxwell Knight, head of the anti-political subversion unit and possibly Ian Fleming's inspiration for 'M'.
I hadn't realised before I started The Fulcrum Files quite how much research was involved in historical fiction - everything has to be checked, nothing can be taken for granted. The research, like the writing, took a long time - one of these days I'm going to try and get a research/reading list together, but just the idea of typing it all out makes me feel tired.
If you are interested in the background events that provided the starting point for this book, then you might like to read Pure Luck, Alam Bramson's biography of Sopwith, and Joan Millers autobiography, One Girl's War. As for me, I think I've read enough history for a while, the next one will definitely be set in the present day, even if it's not set in contemporary culture...
