A thriller of spies and betrayal: by Kim Philby’s granddaughter
Philby is a promising surname to spot on the spine of a spy thriller. But for author Charlotte Philby being the granddaughter of Britain’s most famous communist double-agent has not always been quite so handy.
The writer, who has just landed a book deal with Harper Collins for her debut novel, The Most Difficult Thing, has grown up with the legacy of Kim Philby’s betrayal and defection to the Soviet Union in 1963 once he was exposed as the elusive “third man” in the Cambridge spy ring.
“When I think about what Kim did what I’m always left with – and more so now that I have children of my own – is how do you walk out on your family?”, said Philby. “What compels a person to do that? And then I started to wonder what would happen if the person who walked out – regardless of their motivations – was a woman? That’s my jumping-off point.”
Her thriller, described by its publishers as a cross between John le Carré’s The Night Manager and Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree Yard, straddles the genres of modern domestic drama and classic spy mystery and it opens with a mother who is intending to leave her family for ever. Told by two women, and set in London and on a Greek island, it is based on a real case, in Africa.
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