John Trenhaile
Agent: Kate Burke
Assistant: Sian Ellis-Martin
Biography: After a successful career as a Chancery barrister (specialising in death and its tiresome financial consequences) John Trenhaile published twelve novels on both sides of the Atlantic. They were translated into twenty languages. One of them – THE MAN CALLED KYRIL – was made into a film for TV.
At the start of his literary career he explored the KGB from the inside before going on to do the same for the Chinese Secret Service in a second trilogy. From there he branched out to explore the grim worlds of terrorism, traitors and serial killers. After leaving the bar in order to write John travelled extensively, working for the Taiwanese government as editor and journalist, until he retired in 2001.
John Trenhaile’s Stepan Povin trilogy was republished by Canelo in 2020. It 'Does for the KGB what le Carre does for the British Intelligence Service.' – Philadelphia Inquirer
THE MAN CALLED KYRIL
Thriller, 293 pages, Canelo, January 2022
There's a mole at the top of the KGB...
A double agent is leaking crucial Soviet secrets to London from the heart of Moscow. He must be stopped before the leak becomes a full, raging meltdown.
The KGB director turns to Ivan Bucharensky - codename Kyril - to smoke him out.
Kyril becomes live bait for both sides. The British think he's a double agent. The Russians in London know Kyril must die. The mole thinks Kyril suspects his identity.
Hunted by East and West, only when the last traitor dies will Kyril know who's won the deadliest game ever played...
THE MAHJONG SPIES
Thriller, 412 pages, Canelo, August 2023
Britain’s surrender of Hong Kong to China has been set for 1997. But not everyone is happy. Russia, in particular, dreads the catastrophic upheavals – strategic, economic and political – that must follow.
The KGB plot to ensure that China will inherit only a worthless shell, racked by social and financial instability. Pitted against them are the elite cadres of Chinese Intelligence – the Mahjong Brigade. They need an insider, and their chosen instrument is Simon Young, Hong Kong’s pre-eminent British tycoon.
Simon soon finds that his unparalleled commercial skills count for little in the spy world. Who to trust? Even his beautiful Chinese wife, Jinny, has secrets to conceal…
A VIEW FROM THE SQUARE
Thriller, 304 pages, Canelo, January 2022
Serve the state, or stop a war?
Stepan Povin, the KGB's chief of foreign intelligence, is the West's most prized intelligence agent. For years he has been passing secrets from the heart of the KGB. Now he wants out, and is seeking asylum in the West.
In exchange he has a stunning piece of information to offer: the Soviets are about to capture a sophisticated American spy plane that is so crucial to America's defence she will risk nuclear war to keep its secrets safe...
THE GATES OF EXQUISITE VIEW
Thriller, 415 pages, Canelo, August 2023
Amid the explosion of computer technology in the 1990s, nothing comes close to Apogee – a software program able to process human speech in any language, paving the way for pilotless planes, driverless tanks and a global communications network limited only by human imagination.
China, soon to resume control of Hong Kong, is now obsessed with an even greater prize in its long march to Pacific supremacy: Taiwan. The outcome is not in doubt, as long as China can secure Apogee – but there’s a problem. The software belongs to Ducannon Young Electronics in Taiwan where Mat Young, son of owner Simon, represents his autocratic father. Simon sees little beyond the limitless profits Apogee will generate, but his less hard-boiled son has become embroiled with a Taiwanese actress whose loyalties are hard to read.
All sides will go to any lengths to get inside Mat’s head, convinced that his unique position must give him access to Apogee’s secrets. But Mat knows nothing, and not even the horrors of the torture chamber known to history as the Gates of Exquisite View can change that...
NOCTURNE FOR THE GENERAL
Thriller, 302 pages, Canelo, January 2022
Beyond help. Beyond redemption?
In a Soviet prison camp near Murmansk is an old man, bowed but not broken, identified only by a number. Were his name known, his fellow inmates would kill him.
For this old man is Stepan Povin, former KGB general, now disgraced but kept alive for the sake of the secret that he has retained through two years of interrogation.
Povin's secret is the final link in a chain, the completion of which would make his former masters very happy indeed - a secret which draws British Intelligence ever closer to the camp in the Arctic Circle...
THE SCROLL OF BENEVOLENCE
Thriller, 366 pages, Canelo, August 2023
China’s supreme leader is at the point of death, and a complacent world yawns, convinced that the ‘sleeping dragon’ will never awake. But what if the world is wrong, and China has covertly managed to amass inconceivable military might?
In Hong Kong, the financial and commercial giants have secretly arranged to leave before the Chinese takeover in 1997, their vast assets wired to safety by brilliant software codenamed The Scroll of Benevolence. Lo Bing, an ambitious Chinese general who plans to make a bid for power when China's ruler dies, is determined to frustrate them at all costs.
Russian and American agents, racing against time to preserve a peace undermined by Lo Bing's plotting, join forces to prove what the general most wants to hide: that China has secretly become a strategic superpower.
Meanwhile Diana, daughter of Simon Young, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent businessmen, is trapped deep in China. If she is to survive she must reach Hong Kong before the final countdown to Benevolence. Her only hope rests with a beyond-handsome Chinese youth – but is he friend, or foe...?