So, the following year, starting on publication day, I began the most intensive UK publicity tour I’ve ever done. The nuclear issue was a hot ticket not just in the UK but around the globe; every VW Beetle and Camper on the planet was stickered-up with the yellow smiling-sun symbol and the words ‘Nuclear Power – nein danke!’

Tony Mulliken and his team had earned their money. I was on the road for three weeks, and in those days you did interviews in every town and city in England, Wales and Scotland, on both BBC radio and the local commercial station, as well as two or even three newspapers, plus television appearances. By the time we had finished I was exhausted, but excitedly and expectantly looking at the Sunday Times bestseller listings. But my name was nowhere to be seen. A few days later I found out why.

My publishers had yet again printed a meagre 1,750 copies. Yet again 1,600 of those had gone to the libraries. At least good old WH Smith had not let me down – they doubled their order to a whopping 60 copies! That left just 90 for the whole of the rest of the UK!

A salutary lesson learned, very early on: behind every successful author there is a publisher with faith in them. It was some years before I was to find that publisher …

There is a standing joke among authors that the rarest thing in the world is an unsigned copy of one of their books. But I guess in the case of those early copies of Atom Bomb Angel the joke is probably true. I hope you find it fun to read.

Peter James
Sussex

Chapter 1

1

There were five men in the rear section of the railway carriage. Two read, one watched the scenery, one slept, one picked his nose. The train was travelling across Canada, from Vancouver to Montreal. It was fourteen and a half hours out of Winnipeg, and would be arriving in Montreal in just over twenty-four hours’ time. The intention was that by the time the train got to Montreal, one of the men in this section of the carriage would be dead. Me.

If any of the five had met before, they didn’t show it, and, as is often the way with strangers flung together in railway carriages, none had as yet acknowledged even the existence of any of the others. Without wishing to draw the attention of the rest, two of the men were particularly anxious to make each other’s acquaintance: myself and the man who had come to kill me.

I flicked, mechanically, through the pages of my book. It was by Lillian Beckwith, and was called The Hills is Lonely. I could have assured her it wasn’t just the hills: the hectares of December prairie that drifted endlessly past the window were lonely too. Almost as lonely as being in this railway compartment.