BFL19 - Fake News - The Pepys Conspiracy

Treated as a joke by most biographers of Samuel Pepys, his brother-in-law, Balty St. Michel deserves much better. Balty's intrepid detective work saved Pepys, imprisoned in the Tower and facing rapid execution for high treason. Balty's reward? He was dispatched to the besieged garrison of Tangier to face likely death.

In 2007, James Long and his son Ben explored the lost truth behind all this in their non-fiction The Plot Against Pepys but for years afterwards that monstrously unjust outcome continued to niggle away at James.

One day, the only plausible explanation struck him, and he has now turned this into a novel, described in reviews as 'punchy, touching and sometimes wildly scary' as it  whisks the reader from Kent to Paris, Portugal and old Tangier.'

James Long was a BBC TV news correspondent until the end of the 1980’s.  After two years starting and running an international TV station out of Zurich, he returned to England to concentrate on writing. He wrote four thrillers then went back to Ferney, a story of love and self-discovery that he had begun many years earlier. More novels followed, including two written under the pseudonym Will Davenport.  He moved into historical fiction in 2007 with The Plot Against Pepys, co-written with his eldest son Ben, and the prequel to The Pepys Conspiracy.