I’m delighted to welcome Alison Morton back to my blog. You’d think that creating a successful eleven-book series about Roma Nova, an imaginary European country where a remnant of the Roman Empire – this time ruled by women – has survived into the modern world would be enough to keep her busy, but she has recently been creating new fans for a series of contemporary thrillers. The third, Double Stakes, has just come out. I’ve read the first, Double Identity and have plunged straight into Double Pursuit, so I am catching up! What I love about her writing, apart from the pace of the plot and the power of her tough but compassionate heroines, is that I can trust her to have researched diligently. With these new thrillers, we enter the world of espionage, crime and and, in the case of this new book, the chilling aspects of modern European politics. Now, over to Alison and her new heroine, Mel...
Making stuff up but building on real life. That’s basically what novel writers do. However, it’s not quite that simple.
When I created an alternative timeline for my Roma Nova thriller series, I built an imaginary world that has shifted from our own historical time, but still resembled our own in many ways. The people were like us: happy, tired, generous, cantankerous, sloppy, joyful, tough, compassionate – take your pick. As thrillers, the stories were fast-paced, hopefully exciting, and dealt with conspiracy, treason, personal doubt, courage, moral and physical dilemmas and the need for a resolution – even one that was not totally satisfactory.
So far so good. But even with the most detailed setting and exciting plot, a story can fall flat if the characters are two-dimensional. As readers, we like to know what’s behind these people doing all this action. Where were they brought up? What were their formative experiences? What do they want from life?
In my contemporary ‘Doubles’ series, I still have a strong woman as the central character and like Carina and Aurelia in the Roma Nova series, I’ve put her in uniform. But there the similarities diverge.
Mélisende des Pittones is the daughter of a French father and English mother. Her comfortably-off landed family have been settled in Poitou in western France for centuries, even weathering the French Revolution. Mélisende was sent to a top Parisian private school and although she did sufficiently well in her exams, she did not turn out as a ‘young lady’.
She joined the French army at 18 and at the start of the first book, Double Identity she has successfully completed two five-year contracts, becoming a senior NCO intelligence analyst in a special forces team. She was about to marry her life’s love, Gérard Rohlbert, who’d been working in the City of London and was looking forward to a future life with her perfect partner and living a Parisian metropolitan lifestyle, possibly with children. Then her life was wrecked. However, she does recover and go on to feature in Double Pursuit and another assignment in the third novel of the series – only just out – Double Stakes.
Much as we enjoy watching our hero or heroine defeating a ‘bad guy/girl’, a real-life soldier or front-line operative uses skills and abilities learnt through years of training and practised during experience. To make our character authentic, we need to find out what these entail.
Mel (as her English mother, Susan, calls her) or Mélisende (as father, Henri, insists on) is a sergent-chef in the French Armée de Terre (land forces), a rank equivalent to junior warrant officer in the UK forces. Contrary to what was expected of her as the daughter of a minor aristocratic family and entering the officer training school at Saint-Cyr, she joined as a direct entrant at the non-commissioned officer (NCO) level at 18. Her father who had done his compulsory military service as a cavalry officer was surprised but respected her choice.
I suspect Mel had itchy feet after leaving her ‘hothouse’ school and wanted to get going with an active career rather than buckle down to more study. She’s twice refused promotion to a more senior position because those roles include much more administration. She might think about accepting her colonel’s recommendation for a commission as an officer in the future but her priority remained serving in a front-line role. So she wasn’t at all happy at being seconded to an office-based job in a mysterious agency in Brussels. She had no idea at the time that it would turn out to be anything but office-based.
Mel belongs to a specialist group of intelligence analysts attached to the special forces based at Strasbourg and has the reputation of determination and decisiveness. She’s fluent in English as well as French, speaks some Italian and German. As somebody of mixed parentage, she’s equally at home with the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ mindset as with the continental French one. This can be a great asset for liaison missions even if she sometimes feels an outsider in both environments.
Some of this background seeps into the stories where necessary, but only when it’s in context or relevant to the story. Looking through Mel’s eyes and filtering her thoughts and speech through her mental and emotional mindset, and her experience of life, is essential to writing her character.
Over the three books, I’ve enjoyed developing Mel, softening her rough corners and watching her learn new skills needed in challenging criminal and political problems in the world outside the military. You may not want her for a best friend – although she has a very loyal nature – but she is, with all her faults and abilities, a very human person just like us.
Former French special forces intelligence analyst Mélisende is desperate for recovery time after a gruelling mission. But when enforcers attack her family home in rural France, she uncovers a shocking truth – her sister-in-law’s gambling debt has put them all in danger.
Before Mel can untangle the crisis, she is ordered to Germany, where the daughter of Achim Nessler – the front-runner for chancellor – has been abducted. The kidnappers’ goal? To force Nessler to throw the upcoming election, paving the way for a hard-right victory that could upend not just Germany, but all of Europe.
Racing against time, Mel and fellow investigator Jeff McCracken dive into the murky world of extremist politics where old wounds and new betrayals collide. But as their hunt leads them deep into eastern Germany’s shadows, Mel discovers a chilling link between the case and her own family’s troubles.
Now, with both a nation’s future and her loved ones at stake, Mel must risk everything to stop a conspiracy that hits closer to home than she ever imagined.
Double Stakes is the third in the Mélisende Doubles thriller series.
Ebook – all digital retailers: https://books2read.com/DoubleStakes
Paperback: https://www.alison-morton.com/where-to-buy-double-stakes/
Connect with Alison:
Award-winning thriller writer Alison Morton lives in Poitou, France. Six years’ military service, a fascination with Ancient Rome and a life of reading crime, historical and thriller fiction have inspired her writing.
