Could we have a new John Le Carre waiting to be discovered here on the Isle of Wight?
Born in Malta in 1952 and brought up in Beirut, Mogadishu, Damascus, Basra, Madrid, the New Forest, Benghazi and Sana’a, author Crispin Keith has now spent most of his life on the Isle of Wight.
As a history teacher for 37 years (including to our very own editor, Darren Toogood), he’ll be remembered by many a former student but may be more familiar to others as a driving force behind local shanty group the Brighstone Barnacles and as a member of Freshwater Bay Golf Club and West Wight Bridge Club.
A keen writer, Crispin began his first novel aged 10, followed by plays, teaching materials, biographies, short stories and songs. This, his debut thriller, is a classic whodunnit but with a contemporary edge.
Claustrophobia, resentment, paranoia and murder are at the heart of this exploration into the deepest depths of the government’s most secret agencies. Crispin has created a fantastic sleuth in Lydia Twomey, a bright young MI5 officer who sets out to burst the bubble of the public school and Oxbridge-educated male elite, whilst foiling a plot that threatens to topple British democracy.
Of his inspiration for the book Crispins says:
“In 1983 I was part of an Apollo Players cast that performed a play in Parkhurst Prison. The ‘dirty protests’ were taking place in the adjoining Albany Prison, and the prison officers in Parkhurst said that our play, the 1st live entertainment in Parkhurst for over a decade, headed off similar protests in their prison.
“The story that they told us over drinks about one of their inmates and a prominent politician is what inspired this story. It got me thinking, where would evidence that could implicate a powerful figure seized from a burglar be stored? And how would people who wanted to destroy the evidence go about it?”
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Readers will have a chance to meet the author and pick up a signed first edition when the book is launched at Medina Bookshop in Cowes on Thursday 29th June at 18:30.
Book Guild is a vanity press.
I actually read one of Crispin’s previous books from the Kindle store and it was so bad it was good. Hilarious how he makes the island the centre of all that happens in his sci fi/fantasy world. Give his books a go just for the entertainment value.
I’m sure he was a teacher at Medina
Did the first sentence of the second paragraph not give that away?
“As a history teacher for 37 years”