Who Was Nightshade?

It is summer 1963, the era of The Beatles and the first James Bond movies. Youth culture is taking over, but the shadows of the Second World War and its demon offspring, the Cold War, still loom, particularly for the older generation. Nowhere is immune to the mood of paranoia, not even the tiny east Hertfordshire village of Fordham Market, where skullduggery, with its roots in both conflicts, is afoot. Through a series of unexpected fatalities, Richard Warren, a well-educated, gay man in his mid-thirties, has inherited not only The Priory, his parents' impressive pile in Fordham Market, but also Wyvern Hall, his uncle's neighbouring, slightly more ramshackle, estate. The only problem is that Richard is broke and his dead relatives seem only to have bequeathed him debt. His old college friend Tony Smallwood offers to help him out of this predicament. But, unknown to Warren, Smallwood is an agent working for the Soviet Union.

This is Eamonn Vincent's first novel. He has previously published Me Neither, a memoir of the Seventies and Eighties and two volumes of poetry Only More So and Even More So, all available from Arbuthnot Books. His new novel Event/Horizon set in Cambridge in the 1970s is scheduled for publication by Arbuthnot in May 2022.

Buy Who Was Nightshade? on Amazon.

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Event/Horizon

Event/Horizon is a postwar coming-of-age story, in a broadly comic mode, but touching on darker aspects of the period, as well as on love, loss, and the pains of growing up. Set in Cambridge in 1974, it interweaves aperçus of academic life with those of the local poetry scene, theatre life, and the era’s counter-culture, — rock music, drugs, and casual sex — with all of which its hero, would-be poet Steve Percival, finds himself having to grapple, in his quest for love, enlightenment and artistic fulfilment. Apart from Event/Horizon Eamonn Vincent has published a memoir of the 1970s and 1980s Me Neither , two volumes of poetry Only More So and Even More So and more recently Who Was Nightshade? , a comic spy thriller set in the 1960s. All titles are available from Arbuthnot Books. Buy Event/Horizon on Amazon.

Bristol Lodekka

I was fairly doubtful about this plan. What if we passed an inspector en route which was far from improbable at that time of morning. Speedy thought for a bit and then suggested that we avoid the city centre altogether. He reasoned that an inspector would have no reason to be on duty on The Backs for example. He sketched out the route we would take and then we’d resume our schedule at Mitcham’s Corner. I wasn’t even sure that there was enough clearance for a double-decker bus on the route he was suggesting but I could see that the longer we debated the issue the later we were likely to be. No doubt my lack of moral fibre was connected to the monumental hang-over I was nursing so I agreed weakly, put up the Not In Service sign and hid myself in the back of the bus. A Bristol Lodekka LFS 45 is faster than a Morrison Electricar milk float, but not much. Despite that fact Speedy managed to coax an impressive performance from the lumbering beast and we made up most of the time lost due to m...

Eamonn Vincent

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