Even after three novels, there is a cycle of fear in my writing process. Before I begin to develop a story I am fearful that I won’t find a workable idea that I can develop into a narrative. Once I identify the rough nugget that I plan to hone, I worry that I may not be capable of doing the idea justice. Then I begin to write, and the story takes shape. It’s exciting. I feel that the narrative is beginning to glow with the power to connect to readers – which is after all, the reason I’m writing. However, when the draft is completed, the anxiety envelops me again; I may like what I’ve written but will anybody else? These days I recognise this cycle as simply part of the process and I slap myself around the head and write through it. However, when it came to my latest book, The Protocols of Spying, there was a new challenge to confront and overcome.
The problem was the geopolitics and the febrile situation in the Middle East. I was so uneasy about writing the book that I tried to avoid it. I even pitched a different idea to my publisher, Jamie Hodder-Williams at No Exit Press. He said he liked the new idea but added, ‘Don’t you think your readers deserve the next book in the Eli Amiram series?’ Of course, he was right.
There were stories I’d left hanging that needed be paid off and there were characters who had to continue along their emotional journeys. In my fictive world, Eli Amiram is the head of London Station and the best spy runner in the Mossad. He’s serious, intelligent, cultured, principled but spying is dirty and through the course of the series the job changes him. Eli has a sidekick, Rafi, an impossibly handsome man with movie-star looks. He’s a serial adulterer and gloryboy spy. And then there’s Petra, a British Jew who works for the Mossad as local help. She’s tough, fit and takes no prisoners.
How could I leave them in fictive limbo? They were lined up and primed to go. Thematically, this third book was always going to be about disinformation and truth, which fascinates and worries me. So because this is a contemporary novel that’s supposed to be realistic I had to write about the aftermath of October 7th and how the world has changed.
When I told a friend who lives in Israel that this is what I was planning to do his reaction was unequivocal: ‘Don’t do it. Emotions are too raw and too painful. People will be hurt.’ But if I didn’t write about October 7th then the book would be a cop-out. Moreover, I would be cheating the reader if I didn’t finish the stories I’d started. While in no way comparing myself to Graham Greene for style (and bad behaviour), he wandered through London during the Blitz with his friend Elizabeth Bowen and they must have been aware that they were experiencing a seminal moment in history – as we are now.
Storytelling is about choreographing emotions, which is exactly what spies do.
This book was hard to write, the hardest thing I’ve ever written, but I’m pleased with it and I’m also pleased that I listened to Jamie and overcame the fear: I’ve already had some great feedback, including Charles Beaumont. Let the reader be the judge.
The Protocols of Spying by Merle Nygate is published on 9 October 2025 as a £10.99 paperback original from No Exit Press, part of Bedford Square Publishers
