My Apologies to all who have enquired. Technical problems at the publishers with the formatting has prevented my planned release date of the 15th of December. I hope to upload the kindle version of the book by Christmas. Updates to follow. The book is my fourth offering and is a stand alone novel. Below is the forward to the book.
WT Delaney, a former Royal Marine and a good friend of mine, has asked me to provide a foreword to his fourth book, The Long Shadow of Panjshir. This gripping novel is an espionage-based military adventure that explores the murky and dangerous worlds of political contract killing, covert intelligence collection, armed insurgency and deadly treachery.
The story starts in the Valley of the Five Lions, in Panjshir Province, Afghanistan, where a malignant past has shaped the violent present to produce an uncertain future. It moves to London in early 2022, several months after the fall of Kabul to the resurgent Taliban, and when Vladimir Putin is ominously massing his forces on the border of Ukraine. A beautiful but battle-hardened Russian spy, codenamed Babushka, arrives openly in town on a mission that baffles Britain’s MI5 and MI6. At the same time, a pathological serial killer is on the loose, wreaking bloody havoc with a Spetsnaz combat knife among expatriate Afghan agents on the books of the British Security Service. Are the two mysteries in any way connected?
The action moves back to Afghanistan and uncovers a spider’s web of murder, deceit and power struggles linked to the heart of the Kremlin, with alarming echoes of Cold War nuclear weapons deployment. As the story unfolds, spy chief Collette Brown and former soldier Christian ‘Mac’ McCann, of MI6, race to discover the truth that connects a savage betrayal during the Soviet occupation of that unhappy country to the current insurgency against the brutal regime of the Taliban. There, against the hauntingly rugged beauty of the Panjshir Valley, MI6 uncovers secrets about Babushka, the sinister knife assassin and the imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine that could save thousands of lives.
Once again, WT Delaney has drawn on his extensive experience to conjure up a feast of thrills and spills with a plot rich in imagination, yet one that reflects so much of the reality of covert and complex security intelligence operations, in both the UK and one of the most dangerous places on earth. The Long Shadow of Panjshir will certainly not disappoint readers of his earlier enthralling stories and is warmly recommended.
DM
I hope you enjoy it when it finally arrives.
Have a wonderful Christmas
BernieP (AKA W T Delaney)
