Shortly after completing The Radar Job, my publisher approached me with a suggestion that I take a look at a manuscript entitled The Gold Run Three Affair, by Ralph Gordon, based on the writer’s own experiences shortly after World War II. (NB: Ralph Gordon is not his real name – the reason for my preserving his anonymity will become apparent, but suffice it to say at this stage that he wants nothing to do with Gold Run. It’s also probably better for me not to identify my publisher either, so I shall call him Fred.) The typed manuscript told a good story about an underground Nazi organisation called Die Spinne (The Spider), but Fred felt that it needed drastic editing – would I be interested in having a go at this as it was not a million miles away in content from Faust and Radar? The book would then be published as a co-written venture. I agreed to take a look, then carried out a pretty detailed editing job on it, cutting out, or shortening, some sequences that seemed irrelevant to me, while expanding some others, but this didn’t go far enough for Fred – he wanted a complete rewrite. ‘Write it your way,’ he said.

The problem was that I had been told that the story was at least partly true – but which parts? I didn’t want to make any changes to actual events, so I told Fred that it might be best if I met Ralph to sort that out; Fred apparently agreed and kept saying he would arrange a meeting, but it never happened. I ended up making some pretty drastic changes to the story, changing some of the characters who I was fairly sure were invented and inserting a whole new subplot concerning investigations into Die Spinne, until all that was left of the original were sequences between the three main characters and some scenes involving Army life that seemed pretty authentic in terms of background. I submitted the revised version to Fred, expecting still to have a meeting with Ralph, who had not seen my manuscript at all, but Fred then went ahead and published it anyway, using the name Ralph Gordon on the cover (along with mine).

Some time later, I received a letter from Ralph’s solicitors, saying that he was suing Fred for publishing the book without his consent – I was relieved to find that it had been sent to me purely for information, and I was not included in the suit. In some ways, it was the beginning of the end of my relationship with Fred. I was far from happy with what had happened, and even though the chances of the original manuscript ever being published were virtually zero (it had already been to a large number of publishers without success), I could sympathise with Ralph Gordon to a very large extent; it was his baby and it had been taken away from him.

It was not taken up by Walker Books for publication in the States, either because they were aware of the legal issues involved, or they weren’t very impressed by it anyway. Looking back on it now, I suspect it was the second motive – it isn’t a book that I’m all that pleased with nowadays. I never felt that I was really in control of it at any time – I could not get any real handle on the central relationship, or even on the characters themselves, which didn’t help. Even before I had finished working on it, I had decided that I was not going to be involved in any more collaborations. Fred apparently felt the same; he had suggested that I take a look at a story outline for an espionage thriller that he had been sent, but, after Gold Run, he never mentioned it again.

Fast forward to the year 2010, when I was thinking of releasing the books in ebook format; I tracked Ralph down (I still have never actually met him) and contacted him with a view to republishing the book – there was no way that I was going to proceed without his approval – and I discovered that, even now, he is still bitter about the experience (understandably) and would not countenance the release of a book that he described as an ‘abomination’. I took that as a ‘no’…

Whether it is the knowledge that it is dead in the water or I’m simply looking at it with a more critical eye, I have come to realise that there is far too much that still needs doing to it anyway – for example, the Die Spinne in the book bears little resemblance to the actual Nazi organisation set up in the later stages of the War and which continued to operate for some time afterwards. So that’s it, really – finished, kaput. Oddly enough, it was a book that my Mum always liked, because of the romance that is central to the story, but (sorry, Mum!), it’s that same romance that is the problem – it just doesn’t make sense.

So that was Gold Run. Put it down to experience.