60,000 words into The Poisoned Tide, the first in my trilogy of spy thrillers set at the beginning of the 20th century. The Poisoned Tide will be published next year and is set in the Secret Service Bureau, as MI 6 was known in its first years. The action takes place in Britain, Germany and the United States, and, as before, is based on real characters and events. One of the characters is Commander Mansfield Cumming, the first head of the Secret Intelligence Service to sign himself ‘C’.