File on Lester

‘I think there must be some mistake.’

James Lester is a rising star in the political world and all signs point to his becoming the next Prime Minister, but the appearance of a mystery girl, claiming to have a history with the MP, threatens a scandal capable of wrecking his campaign.

Lester denies the association, but each new revelation by the girl is more damning and dramatic than the last. As the scandal grows, a small number of journalists take up his cause and resolve to properly investigate the case. Who is Shirley Holt? And how does she know so many details about an event that Lester claims never to have taken place?

Told through media reports and diary entries, Andrew Garve delivers another ingenious thriller.

‘Garve at his most irresistibly cunning’ New York Times

‘In all the excellently varied books Garve has given us he surely cannot have found a better plot’ The Times

Andrew Garve is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

Andrew Garve was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.