Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

My latest thriller, Purple Killing, is coming very soon. It is written in a modern style in a scene by scene format, with punctuation which follows reading flow rather than traditional rules. This creates a compelling  narrative, easy to read and hard to put down. This book is a work of fiction, but at its heart there is a real historical cover-up. This drives the plot, but almost all the events and characters are fictional. Some characters appear also in Hitler’s First Lady, but that is a novel much more closely linked to known historical facts and the true story of a family, which appears in both books as the Benedicts. Here most of their story is fiction, as are all the modern characters within the family and in the world beyond.

About the Book

Dr. Rachael Benedict is an American historian and a best-selling author. She has a British connection through her estranged father Saul, an English thriller writer. Saul, whose parents were of Anglo-German origin, has spent much of his life plotting to expose secrets from World War Two, which are so sensitive they have been subject to an extensive cover-up lasting seventy years. As the time approaches for him to make his move to expose duplicity, murder and lies at the heart of the British State, he seeks Rachael’s help. This provokes a killing spree as parts of the security services of both Britain and the United States become engaged in the drama, with one side determined to get the secrets out and the other determined to keep them hidden.

Set equally in the United States and Britain, the narrative grips from the first page, transporting the reader to the heart of government both in Washington and London and on into the darkest corners of the secret states on each side of the Atlantic. Rachael battles forward to unearth the truth both from intrigues of the Nazi era, but also within her own family, surviving three attempts on her life, before finally achieving her goal. Not only does she expose the truth from history and from her own roots, she has to delve deep into her own emotions to find the truth about herself.

There is further anxiety today because reports indicate that the UK authorities have a huge backlog of unresolved immigration files, and worse have entirely lost track of tens of thousands of people refused entry but perhaps  still here. The usual demands for this that and the other to be done are all over the media. This blog takes a different view and in so doing it is out of tune with majority public opinion in the UK. If you are a member of a club you have to stick to all the rules and you cannot stick to some and avoid others. If you do not like the rules you should not be a member.

The political, cultural and economic benefits of being part of the EU are enormous, but they will only accrue the full measure of  advantage if Britain embraces the whole project hook, line and sinker, including the free movement of citizens of the EU to move from one country to another. There has to be a change in the way we see our relationship. We must see ourselves as insiders, with all the other member states, looking out, not outsiders looking in, as we do now. We would then see that issues of communities being allegedly ‘swamped’, benefit tourism, housing shortages, overstretched services, education and language difficulties, cultural and religious tensions and all the other things complained of are not the fault of outside interference from Brussels. They are instead due to years, even decades of economic and social mismanagement from London.

There is no point in trying to tinker with EU rules through negotiations, nor having tantrums about sudden bills which we forgot were coming, nor blaming unemployment on the Poles. We either knuckle down in good humour and stay or we have the courage of our convictions and go. If we choose to go there is  just one more question to answer.

Where to?