A Wicked Device

About the Book

This is a tale of loyalty and betrayal. Charlie Barrow, a British journalist with a colourful past now working in Germany, is obsessed by The Movement, a neo-Nazi organisation with growing influence among the young in the former German Democratic Republic. When he witnesses the murder of a member of The Movement in the back streets of Berlin, he’s even more determined to delve into a dangerous world where the Far Right maim and kill and plan the assassination of a German chancellor at an anti-Nazi rally close to the Brandenburg Gate – the symbol of the division, conflict and violence that overtook Germany in the 20^th century. Charlie Barrow is never sure whether his contacts in the police and the security forces, notably with a woman officer with whom he falls in love, are there to help or hinder him – or even destroy him altogether. The story takes us into the very core of neo-Nazism, its brutality, its mindless longing for the return of a Fuehrer, and its links to other latter day terrorist organisations, including Al Qaeda.    

About the Author

Jack Thompson was born a long time ago in the North of England. After spells as a bus conductor, teacher, industrial spy and pianist in working men’s clubs, he joined the BBC where he eventually landed the job of foreign correspondent for the World Service. He reported from south-east Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He followed the Vietnamese army into Cambodia as it overthrew the Khmer Rouge and saw the grisly aftermath of Pol Pot’s “Killing Fields”. He was nearly blown to bits by militiamen in Lebanon and verbally pilloried by Saddam Hussein’s information ministry for a report on human rights abuses in Iraq. His superiors at the BBC described him as ‘curmudgeonly and subversive’, a badge he wears with pride. Which is why he left in 1995 and became a newscaster for Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin. Since 2002, he’s devoted himself to writing, playing the piano again and trying to help with the upbringing of his grandchildren. In March 2006, he won the Scottish Association of Writers Pitlochry Award for crime writing. He lives in London with his wife, Kathryn.