Peter Whyte-Venables

Born in Africa in 1961, Peter’s only passion for decades has been writing. As an erstwhile artist (commissions from HRH Princess Michael of Kent, Phil Collins, among many others), he has preferred to follow his nose rather than a career path. This, taking a convoluted route from manual labour to being proofreader for one of Poland’s topmost law firms, via Borneo (an expedition sponsored by HRH (the then) Prince of Wales, and for which he was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society) and the SAS, has allowed him the time to engage in his passion to the fullest.

He currently has four writing projects under way: the third and fourth parts of The Aleksander Quartet (a series of thrillers which takes the reader from WWII 1943 to apocalyptic 2026), One for the Road, an account of his four-month solo 21,000km motorcycle journey through 22 European countries; Girls, God and Vodka, an essential read for anyone planning to move to Poland, and Blades, a very alternative history of the SAS.

Since 2009 Peter has lived in Warsaw, which, in a break from the pattern to date, he has no intention of leaving, since it contains his only other passion–his young son.

Green Remembered Hills: Travels Through Borneo's Lost Paradise

Two young men decide to escape the tedium of everyday life in England by trekking through the primeval, disease-ridden jungles of Borneo. Deep in the forest, they are rewarded with belief in black magic, evidence of headhunting, and the experience of priceless virgin rainforest–and its ongoing destruction. But also there is Cambridge University and Handel’s Water Music. There is, too, even a thousand river miles from the coastal cities, no escaping Christmas. . .

“This is Tuak, do you want some?” Dik said. Rice wine.

Now, I like my drink out of a bottle or a mug, and the food on my plate to keep still while I eat it, but I’d heard about tuak too often to turn down at least a sip.

Just then there was a movement on the floor beside me. In the gloom I made out, with no small surprise, a man lying flat out on the floor. He had one tooth and two glazed eyes.

“Wow,” Chris said quietly impressed. “Must be good stuff. Go on, Pete. Try it. Make a man of you, it will. Something needs to.”

Kindred Blood

“One day sooner or later this weapon will be in our hands and . . . it will be more terrible than anything that has gone before.’’ In 1941, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess tells MI6 how terrifyingly advanced Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons programme already is. In the very last days of the war, with the Fatherland being choked to death in a closing fist of steel, Hitler launches the most audacious scheme of the entire war: Operation Magi–a radiation attack on America’s West Coast. Three U-boats are ordered to the Far East, each loaded with a deadly cargo of enriched uranium, which the Americans will stop at nothing to capture.

The first U-boat is sunk, the second captured, leaving the third somewhere in the vast Atlantic Ocean, still going, ploughing, unnoticed, westwards through the rolling green, still capable of winning the war for Germany. But for one man aboard this final submarine, Operation Magi means more than just winning the war. For renegade SS Major Paul Stadler, under secret orders of his own, it could also be his first–and last–chance to finally meet the love of his life. His young Jewish-American son.

Double Action

From the streets of Europe to the mountains of Afghanistan, the West is fighting militant Islam. British Special Forces member Aleks Calvert applies for the SAS, but when for reasons never disclosed, disillusioned, he quits the British Army.

Yearning for action, salvation arrives as ‘Mad’ Jock Fraser, a fellow SAS recruit who has also left the Army, offers him security work. Unaware that Fraser now works for a Russian Mafia people-smuggling gang, Aleks accepts.

However, just as Fraser is identified as being the gang’s UK link, Aleks's ex-SBS brother, David, is offered a large fee for a task for which he needs four men. Urgently needing one more man, David sets Aleks up as the fall guy in a scheme to trap Fraser, who, believing Aleks to be ideal for facilitating a kidnapping, gives him his first task. Aleks quickly sees multiple weaknesses in the task’s feasibility, becomes suspicious, and, seeing an opportunity to regain his professional credibility, prepares a double-cross.

Willingly, he steps into the trap.