Concept

A Christie-esque thriller set on a battlefield tour bus towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. The facts – Franco began running hugely popular tourist trips to his northern battlefields while the Spanish Civil War still raged. At the same time, foreign correspondent Kim Philby, already a spy for Moscow – and ironically already decorated by Franco for bravery – was selected by Stalin to carry out an audacious assassination attempt on the Generalísimo’s life. What if such an assassin managed to secure a place in one of the tour groups as part of the assassination plan but wanted to escape by shifting the blame to a fellow-passenger?

Synopsis

September 1938. Spain’s Civil War has been raging for two years, the outcome still in the balance. But rebel General Francisco Franco y Bahamonde  is so confident of winning that he has opened up battlefield tourism along the country’s north coast.

Jack Telford, a reporter and self-professed Socialist, finds himself amongst an eccentric group of tourists on one of the War Route’s yellow Chrysler buses. Driven by his passion for peace, Telford attempts to uncover the hidden truths beneath the conflict, despite the best efforts of the Caudillo’s propaganda machine.

But Jack must contend first with his own gullibility, the tragic death of a fellow-passenger, capture by Republican guerrilleros, a final showdown at Spain’s most holy shrine and the possibility that he has been badly betrayed. Betrayed and in serious danger.

Trailer

About the Author

David Ebsworth is the pen name of writer, Dave McCall, a former negotiator and Regional Secretary for Britain’s Transport & General Workers’ Union. He was born in Liverpool (UK) in 1949, growing up there in the ‘Sixties, but has lived for the past thirty-four years in Wrexham (North Wales) with his wife, Ann.

Since their retirement in 2008, the couple have spent about six months of each year in southern Spain. They have also been keen travellers to other parts of the world, including various other countries of Europe, China, Nicaragua, Colombia, the United States, Canada and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

Dave began to write seriously in the following year, 2009, and maintains a strict daily writing and marketing routine – though he still manages to find time for a regular morning swim, as well as for sailing.

Apart from that, he still does some voluntary work for the TUC (Britain’s union confederation), representing them in the organisations… Migrant Workers North West, Justice for Colombia and the Manufacturing Institute.

Dave is a member of the Historical Novel Society, the International Brigades Memorial Trust, the Anglo-Zulu War Historical Society and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Praise for David Ebsworth’s debut novel, The Jacobites’ Apprentice – critically reviewed by the Historical Novel Society who deemed it “worthy of a place on every historical fiction bookshelf.”

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