The Fulcrum Files [Kindle Edition]

Mark Chisnell (Author)

Book Description

The young, charismatic Ben Clayton was one of Britain's brightest boxing prospects, until the day he slammed a left hook into a fragile chin. Sickened by the consequences he turned away from the ring, and found solace in the arms of the beautiful Lucy Kirk.

Hitler's Challenge

On the 7th March 1936, after almost two decades of peace in Europe, Hitler ordered the German Army back into the Rhineland. It was a direct challenge to Britain and France. Still unnerved by the slaughter of the Great War, the politicians wavered. The French Army stayed in its barracks, while the aristocratic British elite watched from their country retreats.

Knife Edge

History was balanced on a knife edge, and MI5's Fleming White knew that if the German challenge was ignored, Hitler's grip on power would harden like setting steel. The result would be a bigger, bloodier war for which Britain was not ready. It was an outcome that White would do anything to avoid.

Ruthless

The ruthless spymaster pushed his pawns around the board and soon just one man could make the difference between war and peace, victory or defeat. And that man was Ben Clayton. Thrown into the maelstrom of plot and counter-plot, into a world of mysteries, murder, spies and traitors, Ben must battle not just to survive, but to protect all that he loved and held most dear - Lucy.

The Fulcrum Files is historical fiction, a political spy thriller with a twist of romance and murder mystery - read the opening chapters now with 'Look Inside'.

The Fulcrum Files has topped the historical mystery and the thriller chart on Amazon.com.

Mark Chisnell's previous thrillers include The Defector - also a #1 Thriller, at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de.

Reviews for The Fulcrum Files

This book satisfies sailing buffs, history fans, espionage addicts, and anyone else yearning for a good yarn.

Nina Sankovitch, Huffington Post, Thanksgiving for 2012 Books Review

What really impressed me though was the strong characterisation and plotting... Fans of David Downing or Alan Furst in particular should give this book a chance.

Crime Fiction Lover.com

Riveting plotting and engaging characters.

Read All Day.com

This is a well-researched historical thriller... a big book, well-worth settling down to. I shall be looking out for more.

Indie e-book review.com

This amazing, fast paced story emerged before my very eyes and I couldn't put it down.

Kindle Obsessed.com

Editorial Reviews

Review

'What really impressed me though was the strong characterisation and plotting. It is rather complicated, but everything dovetails together very nicely at the end… Fans of David Downing or Alan Furst in particular should give this book a chance.' Crime Fiction Lover

'With his riveting plotting and engaging characters, Chisnell provides a good read.' Read All Day

'This is a well-researched historical thriller with romantic extras. The hero is a poor boy with a brain and the complex snobberies he encounters are sharply delineated. Two nicely contrasted heroines, lots of period detail and a touch of industrial strife thrown in. This is a big book, well-worth settling down to. I shall be looking out for more.' Indie e-book review

'Once the “course” of the book was finally set, I was hooked. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore this amazing, fast paced story emerged before my very eyes and I couldn’t put it down… What you have is just another shining example of why Chisnell is an indie name to keep your eyes on.' Kindle Obsessed

‘History, the sea, adventure, Romance and intrigue make for a good plot but the real measure is if you can put it down or not. I couldn’t and am looking forward to Mark’s next book for he has a new fan.’ Pete Goss

About the Author

Mark Chisnell writes the kind of stories that keep you turning the pages on holiday, and still thinking about them when you get back to work ...
The books include the Kindle chart-topping thrillers - The Defector, The Wrecking Crew and The Fulcrum Files - as well as award-winning works of non-fiction. He's a former professional sportsman and also works as a broadcaster and journalist, writing for some of the world's leading magazines and newspapers, including Esquire and the Guardian.
Probably Mark's greatest achievement was hitch-hiking to Mt Everest base-camp in Tibet. In training shoes. Or maybe that was the stupidest.

Product Details

• File Size: 622 KB
• Print Length: 426 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0074HGO4S
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,040 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars espionage, intrigue and romance March 22, 2012

By Carol Devine

Format:Kindle Edition

All Ben Clayton wants to do is take to the Atlantic Ocean and America as engineer on board the yacht `Windflower', and it looks as though this dream is about to become reality, when - in a scene as memorable as the opening chapter of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love - a shocking accident changes everything. Clayton suddenly finds himself drawn into an increasingly complex tale of murder, politics and espionage.

Having read and reviewed both of Mark Chisnell's previous novels, The Defector and The Wrecking Crew, I was surprised and curious that he had chosen this time to write an historical thriller, based on real events. But he carries it off with great assuredness.

In the English boatyards around Hamble and The Solent pre-World War 2, there is more concern with class divisions than the seemingly unlikely prospect of another war. Yet beyond the upper-class gambling clubs and expensive racing yachts; beyond the struggles and hand-to-mouth existence of the striking fishermen, other forces are at work. When the action moves to Germany, Munich is painted as fashionable, vibrant and alive, but the bonhomie of the beer halls is undermined by the chilling presence of uniformed Gestapo on the streets. It is to the writer's credit that despite the reader's knowledge of the historical outcome, there is still, through Clayton's eyes, the sense of a moment in time: where such things have not yet come to pass.

As ever with a Mark Chisnell novel, we are treated to his pre-occupations with psychology, philosophy, and of course, sailing. The moral dilemma this time is represented by the conflict Clayton faces given his commitment as an avowed pacifist, when pitted against the enormity of the potential threat that looms. And there is a thrilling chase, starting off by train and overland that, as other reviewers have said, is reminiscent of John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps, before taking to the sea, in an open homage to Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands.

I have compared his previous novels to `Boy's Own adventures', so am delighted to say that this time Chisnell gives central roles to not just one, but two female characters, and that both are convincingly portrayed. There is feisty, loyal Lucy, who sails boats and is naturally beguiling even when kitted out as a deckhand in an oversized seaman's jacket; and by contrast, the sophisticated, seductive and mysterious Anna. Clayton is a social maverick, who easily straddles the divide between fisherman's daughter Lucy and upper-class Anna, but which way will he fall when the romantic chips are down? Overall, there is a maturity to Chisnell's writing in this novel; for alongside the intrigue and the fast-paced action, there are some very credible and alluring scenes of tenderness.

As such, this may well be his best novel so far.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best thriller I've read February 8, 2012

By Carol N. Cronin

Format:Kindle Edition

The Fulcrum Files combines several of my own interests: European history, boat design and sailing, and the Riddle of the Sands. Best of all it's spiced up with a few love interests and a murder mystery. The action is fast-paced, the writing is tight, and the characters are so believable and fresh you'll wish you could share a drink with them. This may well be one of the best books I read this year. Highly recommended.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read February 3, 2012

By Rupert Holmes

Format:Kindle Edition

Chisnell's third thriller is another that's impossible to put down, with an intricate plot, superb characterisation and unexpected twists that maintain suspense - and surprise - right to the end.

More About the Author

I grew up in a small town on the east coast of England, a town dominated by the rise of the oil industry and the decline of shipbuilding and fishing. I messed around in boats and read everything written by Alistair MacLean, Ian Fleming and many more like them - but the sea was a non-negotiable part of everyone's life in that little town, and a future as some sort of marine engineer seemed inevitable.

And then I found a copy of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in a hill cabin in England's Lake District. A mix of a hang-over and too much snow restricted any other activity - well, it was New Year - and so I read it over a couple of days.

The cover said it would change the way I thought and felt about the world, and the funny thing was... it did. Pirsig's exploration of quality and values inspired me to drop my plans for engineering, and take philosophy along with physics at college. I also learned that books work - they're important and they can change your life. I wanted to write one. I wanted to write lots.

Those were the days before 19-year olds got seven figure advances for Young Adult novels, and I (rather sweetly in retrospect) believed that I needed to know about the world before I could write about it - at least that was my excuse for buying a one-way ticket and, with US$400 in my pocket, climbing on the plane to Los Angeles.

By the time I got home three years later, I'd had a couple of travel stories published in the New Zealand Herald and the South China Morning Post. And I'd hitch-hiked to Mt Everest base-camp in Tibet. In Adidas trainers. It was either my greatest achievement, or the stupidest. A year later a fully-equipped British summit attempt was airlifted out from the same spot - cue icy chills down the spine when I read that news story.

I'd also got involved in the 1987 America's Cup, a professional sailboat race. Before I knew it, I was being asked to fly around the world to glamorous places - Honolulu, San Francisco, Sardinia and the Caribbean - and being paid to race sailboats. It was an impossibly long way from the life I'd grown up to in that fishing and oil town - and far too good to turn down. The writing would have to wait.

It didn't have to wait long. I quickly started to write about the sport I was so immersed in, publishing hundreds of thousands of words in books and articles on sailing, and winning a couple of awards along the way. And I started to think about a novel - I had an idea from all those philosophy lectures I had endured, a game of the Prisoner's Dilemma played for life and death. The Defector and then the rest of the Janac's Games series grew out of that idea.

My goal for that first book and all my novels since was to keep the reader turning the pages, but to leave them with something to think about afterwards.

What will you do...?

The Defector was first published in the UK by Random House (as The Delivery), and got rave reviews in the trade literature. It was followed up by The Wrecking Crew, the second in what would become the Janac's Games series. Initially, this second book was rejected by London publishers and it seemed that my fiction career was over - but I kept working at it, and a few years later HarperCollins in Australia and New Zealand published them both to coincide with what would be the last big contest in my sailing career, the 2003 America's Cup in Auckland.

I realised that I had been given a second chance at my life's dream of writing novels, but that this time I must fully focus on it. It was time to close the door on my sports career - I didn't have the time or energy for both. What followed was a transitional decade, but I was still lucky enough to get involved in some very cool projects. I went to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia on a beautiful sailing boat. I got to write for some of the world's leading magazines and newspapers, including Esquire and the Guardian, and I worked in television for a while, commentating and script-writing.

There was also a revolution in publishing going on. The Kindle and other eBook readers transformed the business opportunities for writers, and I was quick to take advantage of them to get control of the way my novels were published. The Janac's Games books found success in the eBook formats, and were followed up by The Fulcrum Files - historical fiction of which I'm very proud - and then the first of the Burn series, Powder Burn featuring Sam Blackett, my favourite character to date. There will be more, lots more. Just like I hoped all those years ago.