Our first novel, Beyond Enkription, hasn’t been available long enough to enable us to post many endorsements or comments about it. No doubt if the novel inspires comments most will be posted independently on Kindle and Amazon websites or even in the press. Once sufficient comments are available we aim to provide links to them from this website or reproduce them here.
In the meantime all we can quote are those comments or endorsements we received from the poor souls we forced at gun point to read the initial versions of Beyond Enkription and the drafts and outlines of the other novels in The Burlington Files series. We’ve decided to ignore the comments we found in the suicide notes of those who only made it “beyond” the first few chapters of Beyond Enkription! However, we can include a few jumbled comments from the panel of readers who are still alive and whose feedback was invaluable in helping Bill Fairclough write the first novel.
A punchy, pacy and well researched novel where reality and fiction are so intertwined they become indistinguishable.
Just the stuff memorable films are made of.
Beyond Enkription is more down-to-earth and déclassé than Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, yet more action packed and just as subtle as John Le Carré’s productions.
A thrilling read, full of subterfuge and intrigue!
Set in 1974, Beyond Enkription has the feel about it of Get Carter or The Long Good Friday.
The first book is an unusual espionage novel: at times it came across as so real that I began to wonder if it was a historical novel.
Once you get into the novel the pace is relentless.
The prologue was the key to what followed. Beyond Enkription provided a fascinating insight into a murky convoluted world full of mistrust and deceit.
What a dynastic family! But Edward’s flaws and mishaps, Sara’s melodramatics and nightmares, Hugh’s calm and humour and Roger’s guile and intelligence all blend well as the tangled plots evolve.
A memorable and at times intellectually challenging book so don’t skip the prologue.
As one of the surviving original review panel I was asked to read it three times. Each time I thought I had understood it the last time!
Incidentally, Get Carter and The Long Good Friday are British gangster films from the seventies. Get Carter (1971) starred Michael Caine and The Long Good Friday (1979) starred Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren.
The trouble with endorsements and criticisms of literary works of art (as we so modestly describe The Burlington Files!) or even journalistic efforts is that nowadays you can buy bulk endorsements on Twitter, Facebook and other social websites. Mind you, in the good old days it was just as bad: one could get that old pal who just so happened to work in a newspaper or famous publishers to endorse your book. That’s why we haven’t got a quote that some obscure literary critic from some dated publishing house thought Beyond Enkription was the best book he had ever read and his wife and children loved it too.
Nevertheless, even some illustrious writing awards like the Pulitzer Prize (for journalism) have lost their sparkle. For example, in 2014 the Pulitzer Prize was awarded for dredging and spicing up information that had been in the public domain for years. It was awarded to the Guardian and Washington Post for their coverage of the Snowden revelations. Now, they might be good newspapers, but in 2012 and earlier there were articles about the main contents of the Guardian's and the Washington Post's coverage of what Snowden revealed (eg see Wired.com or FaireSansDire.org) but obviously without reference to Snowden. What's more, these websites actually reported questionable cyberspace activities in perspective: it wasn't just the USA and UK who were abusing privacy etc ... everyone was at it that could be ... from criminal organisations, to dictatorships all the way through to democracies.
If the award was for the stories about that tinker, traitor, thief and spy Edward Snowden then that is another matter entirely. In any event, many don’t think he was a villain: they see him as a hero. After all, like Philby he made fools of so many who thought they were simply the best at what they did when in fact they were far from that. Even so, the Snowden story is not yet over by a long chalk so why dish out prizes for the wrong reasons so quickly? Thus our advice to you is ignore literary critics and don’t assume prestigious awards or prizes for writing actually count.
Our point is simple despite the long and winding road to get there, read Beyond Enkription yourself and make up your own mind if you want to see the rest of the series published. Incidentally, if you want us to post your comments on our website please email them to us via Faire Sans Dire and as long as your comments are not offensive, appear genuine and are attributable we’ll aim to try and include them here.
