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Rory Clements

Rory Clements RORY CLEMENTS is the best-selling author of three thriller series and has won two coveted awards for historical fiction.

This year he has brought out two books - A Cold Wind From Moscow (featuring Cambridge professor Tom Wilde) and Evil in High Places (the second novel in a new series featuring Munich detective Sebastian Wolff). Both books went straight into the Sunday Times Top Ten.

The Financial Times has described Clements as ‘the master of the wartime spy thriller’ - and the acclaimed historical novelist Conn Iggulden has called the new Wolff book ‘electrifying’. The Sun newspaper made it pick of the week with a five- star rating.

Evil In High Places is the author’s seventeenth full-length book. He has also written a novella.

After a career in newspapers, Clements writes full-time in Norfolk, England. He is available for literary events and is always happy to talk about life in the periods he writes about. He is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, the Historical Writers Association, the Society of Authors, International Thrillers Writers and English PEN.

These are the three series:
1) John Shakespeare is a secret agent in Elizabethan England, working for spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham ;
2) Tom Wilde is a Cambridge history professor in the 1930s and 1940s and is sucked into a world of espionage and inrigue;
3) Seb Wolff is a Munich murder cop in the 1930s, when his city is ruled by Nazis, who see it as their spiritual home. He loathes Hitler and everything he stands for, but he is hemmed in by fanatics both at work and home. Munich is a magnet for young, well-to-do English women and men who are attracted by the beer halls, the nearby lakes, the skiing and the chance of romance.

For more information visit www.roryclements.co.uk

Latest Book:Evil In High Places published in hardback, ebook and audio by Penguin Viking, August 2025.

Rory Clements Sebastian Wolff Book 2: EVIL IN HIGH PLACES February 1936. All eyes are on Bavaria in southern Germany for the upcoming winter Olympics. As athletes fight for gold and Nazis fight for power, Detective Sebastian Wolff faces a battle of his own. A famous actress has disappeared and Wolff has been ordered to find her, fast. But Elena Lang is no ordinary film star: she is the mistress of Joeseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief in the party Wolff despises. Corruption runs deep and in a search that will take him from high society to Munich’s darkest corners, Wolff soon discovers how fine the line is between justice and jeopardy.

Tom Wilde Book 8: A COLD WIND FROM MOSCOW

February 1947. Britain's secret services have been penetrated. The country is more vulnerable than ever - and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin knows it. He decides it is time to send his master of 'Special Tasks' to create extra chaos. But Stalin has a more important motive than mere disruption. He has a man on the inside who must be protected at all costs - a communist super-spy who has the secrets of the atomic bomb at his fingertips. Freya Bentall, a senior MI5 officer, no longer knows who to trust and is left with one option: to bring in an outsider whose loyalty is beyond question - Cambridge professor Tom Wilde. His task: to find the traitor in MI5. But as winter bites and violence erupts, Wilde faces an uphill battle to protect those he loves from merciless killers. One slip will spell disaster for the country - and his family.

Sebastian Wolff Book 1: MUNICH WOLF

1935: When a high-born English girl is found murdered, Munich police detective Sebastian Wolff is ordered to solve the crime. The problem is, he is already walking a tight line between doing his job and falling foul of the political party he despises. He has even been consigned to the Dachau concentration camp for a night for failing to salute Hitler. But he is good at his job and he speaks English so he is the obvious choice to find the killer. There are international implications because Germany is involved in delicate negotiations with the British government on a new naval treaty - and the Führer is taking a personal interest in the case. Followed by the secret police and even threatened with denunciation by his own son - a zealous member of the Hitler Youth - Wolff’s task seems impossible. And when he begins to suspect that the killer might be linked to the highest reaches of the Nazi hierarchy, he realises he might become the next victim.

Tom Wilde Book 7: THE ENGLISH FÜHRER

Autumn 1945. The war is over - a new enemy rises. Off the east coast of England a Japanese submarine surfaces, unloads its sinister cargo, then blows itself to pieces. Former spy Professor Tom Wilde is enjoying peacetime in Cambridge, settling back into teaching and family life. Until a call from senior MI5 chief Lord Templeman brings him out of retirement. A nearby village has been locked down by the military, its residents blighted by a deadly illness. No one is allowed in or out. There are rumours that the Nazi war machine is still operational, with links to Unit 731, a notorious Japanese biological warfare research facility. But how could they possibly be plotting on British soil - and why? What’s more, Wilde and Templeman’s names are discovered on a Gestapo kill list. And after a series of assassinations, an unthinkable question emerges: could an Englishman be behind the plot?

Tom Wilde Book 1: CORPUS

1936. Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland, Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror on the Soviet Union, and Spain has erupted in civil war. In Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. Within weeks, she is found dead in her Cambridge bedroom, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers. In a London club, three senior members of the establishment light the touchpaper on a conspiracy that will threaten the lives of royalty and government ministers. When a renowned member of the county set and his wife are found horribly murdered, a maverick Cambridge history professor finds himself drawn into a world of espionage which, until now, he has only read about in books. But the deeper Tom Wilde delves, the more he wonders whether the murders are linked to the death of the girl with the silver syringe - and, just as worryingly, with the scandal surrounding King Edward VIII and his mistress Wallis Simpson. Professor Wilde’s specialist subject is the Elizabethan secret service. With the spires of academia drenched in blood, he must use all the skills he has learnt in his dusty tomes to save the woman he loves and prevent a massacre.

John Shakespeare Book 7: HOLY SPY

1586. In London’s smoky taverns a conspiracy is brewing, and John Shakespeare must infiltrate the plotters. However, equally pressing is the murder charge against the woman he loves. As he battles unseen forces he begins to realise that his investigations are inextricably linked - by corruption at the very seat of power.1586. In London’s smoky taverns a conspiracy is brewing, and John Shakespeare must infiltrate the plotters. However, equally pressing is the murder charge against the woman he loves. As he battles unseen forces he begins to realise that his investigations are inextricably linked - by corruption at the very seat of power.

Bibliography

Bibliography

TOM WILDE SERIES: Corpus (2017), Nucleus (2018), Nemesis (2019), Hitler’s Secret (2020), A Prince And A Spy (2021), The Man In The Bunker (2022), The English Führer (2023), A Cold Wind From Moscow (2025). All published in the UK by Bonnier Zaffre.

JOHN SHAKESPEARE SERIES: Martyr (2009), Revenger (2010), Prince (2011), Traitor (2012), The Heretics (2013), The Queen’s Man (2014), Holy Spy (2015). All published in the UK by John Murray or Hodder & Stoughton. In addition, a John Shakespeare novella, The Man In The Snow, was published as an ebook in 2012 and was later included in The Queen’s Man

SEBASTIAN WOLFF SERIES: Munich Wolf (2024, published by Bonnier Zaffre), Evil In High Places (2025, published by Penguin Viking)