Bøker av Chris Heal

Between the world wars, three powerful men befriended and influenced the young u-boat captain, Erich Gerth, all vehemently anti-communist and on the far right of German politics.

Bored by his initial time in the Baltic, Georg Gerth volunteered for excitement and a u-boat command to counter England's attempt to blockade and starve Germany into submission.

The line between cosy normality and disaster is thin.All it takes is a malign or uncaring person to guide events. Then your world collapses.And there's usually nothing you can do about it.

This book is about a large number of deliberate or untimely deaths in what was thought to be one of the quiet backwaters of Hampshire. In this true-life thriller, Chris Heal investigates twenty local murders beginning in Roman times, over half of them since 1900 and three within the last few years. They are all here: drug runners, people traffickers, robbers and smugglers; killers of animals, of babies, young children and the senile; those who planned revenge and sought the righting of wrongs; battle slaughter, corruption in the legal processes and mob rule. 'I don't hold a magic magnet for attracting this sort of information but you will understand that once you start asking, once you start looking, then people start talking. Odd facts jump out from unrelated pages and take new meanings. People brood for a month or two, then make contact. Collecting murders is like rolling a snowball.' In the conclusion, Heal asks why Four Marks is the murder capital of Southern England. Using careful research, the history of the village is revealed. From prehistoric times, Four Marks was an empty squeeze point on the road north. Formed in 1932, it lacked the heart of a medieval village. Its scrub wasteland was only lately filled by a population with far-flung roots. As well as exploding cherished myths, Heal uncovers a surprising secret that links local development to both a great political movement and one of the UK's largest corporations.

You may assume that most of this book is fantasy, but the facts check out. You sense that the author has been there, from rock climbing to Van Gogh, from flamenco to the Biafran war, from begging in Winchester to travelling through the Sahara. Much of the story may be true. It could even mostly be true. Two parcels of fifty copies each of Disappearing were ordered to confidential addresses in London and Brussels. A file was compiled to aid a decision on whether to suppress publication, parts of which were leaked to the Daily Telegraph. Names of the individuals quoted have been redacted. No censorship was ordered. 'The book explains how an individual can divest themselves of identity, go off grid and use terrorist-supporting Hawala to move money. Heal's success is a direct threat to our banking system and a danger to Western civilisation.' Senior Executive Officer, International Monetary Fund, Informal Funds Transfers 'Any story that quotes freely from Aeschylus, Ascherson, Basho, Bowles, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Eliot, Herodotus, Kant, Larkin, Mandelstam, and a dozen more, must have something going for it.' Professor, Oxford University, attached to the Home Office 'He snipes at most aspects of European government. If what he says wasn't so inherently dangerous, I would recommend ignoring this petulant book.' Senior Conservative politician, attached to National Counter Terrorism Security Office