Then, praise be, my agent phoned with news. My old editor from Bodley Head (who had taken both Knots & Crosses and Watchman) had switched publishers and was now at Barrie & Jenkins. He wanted to revitalise their meagre fiction list. In short, he wanted Westwind. By January 1989 I was discussing further edits to the book and by March I’d signed a contract. Nineteen eighty-nine saw me continuing to write Hide and Seek (at this point titled Dead Beat) while revising Westwind, and still working as a hi-fi reviewer. Westwind was eventually finished by July. I had a new editor by then, however, and she disliked some of the book’s tone, finding it too humorous for a thriller. She wanted a tougher book and I did my best to comply, meaning a further edit. Which brings us to March 1 1990 and publication.

Not that anyone noticed. There was one hardcover printing, one paperback, and one in large format for readers with limited sight. It didn’t sell to the USA and no foreign-language publisher wanted it. What’s more, the book had taken so long to get into print, and been through so many permutations and revisions, that I could muster very little enthusiasm for it myself. Every time my agent or editor had asked me to rework it, I had acquiesced, until it felt like it wasn’t really my book at all – certainly not the one I’d set out to write.

So I decided that it would rest in a dark corner of my consciousness, never to see the light of day again.

Until Twitter changed my mind.

There had been the odd occasion where a fan at a signing would tell me they’d read it and liked it. Those fans had either got lucky in charity shops or else had shelled out a lot of money to a book dealer. Yes, the book had its fans, but I wasn’t among them until someone on Twitter persuaded me to give the book another look. ‘It’s better than you think it is, Ian.’ It had been so long since I’d read it that it felt like reading another writer’s work. This proved to be a good thing – I could be objective as I raced through the pages. Yes, it had a few faults and some of the sentence construction was overwrought. It also felt a little bit dated, but on the other hand it also seemed prescient. I had set it in an alternative 1990 where American troops are being pulled out of Europe. International tensions are high. The US is retrenching and the military is worried about the future direction Europe will take. Satellites circle Earth, being used potentially to spy on everyone and everything. No one knows who to trust, or what’s about to happen.