Historic Spy Novel Highlights Chilling Parallels with Putin’s Power Grab
Author’s vivid account of Kuwait in the year leading up to Independence.
Our Man In Kuwait is a thought-provoking espionage thriller taking readers back to 1960 Kuwait when British expats worried about an imminent invasion from Soviet-backed Iraq. Born and brought up in the Emirate, Burfitt-Dons knows her subject matter intimately. Naval Intelligence agent Ian Fleming stayed in the country while writing “State of Excitement” and became close friends with her father. “
A brilliant marriage of fact and fiction,’ says world chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE.
London, United Kingdom, 3 October 2022—When Louise Burfitt-Dons was living in Kuwait, Ian Fleming arrived to write a book on the oil industry. At the time he was also freelancing for Naval Intelligence. He formed a close friendship with her father and spent many days at the family bungalow. Reliving that period just before the end of the Protectorate inspired the novelist to write Our Man In Kuwait. The big power conflict is hugely relevant to Russia’s current expansion into Ukraine and forces readers to consider what would have happened had the USSR and Abd al-Qasim succeeded.
Synopsis:
Kuwait 1960. With Soviet backing Iraq plans to invade. Gordon Carlisle lives in the expat community of Ahmadi with little to worry about other than when to next don his dinner jacket. Following contact by an MI6 agent everything changes. Even marriage to his beautiful new wife Anita breaks down as he becomes a suspect in a chain of deaths in the Protectorate. But only after he meets visiting author Ian Fleming does he fully understand the complex web of betrayal and murder at work as Iraq assembles its forces.
Themes in the swirling spy thriller include the Cold War conflict of the early sixties which led to Operation Vantage, Ian Fleming’s connection with Middle Eastern spies like double agent Kim Philby and life as it was in the country as the British Empire era drew to an end.
New Century have described it as “a colonial-era thriller set against the background of big power conflict. Our Man In Kuwait is the ultimate timepiece tinderbox of sun, sex and spies.”
Previous books from Louise Burfitt-Dons include The Karen Andersen series, including the Amazon bestselling political thriller The Missing Activist. Our Man In Kuwait is her first historical spy story based on her life experience.