Agents of Independence

Boston, 1802, Lawyer Macleod is a man full of hate. With England at war with France, some powerful Americans feel that the USA's best chance of remaining independent is to throw in their lot with France even if it means accepting a French king for a while. To counter their plot, Macleod heads to New Orleans, where he meets Marie, wife of Etienne de Valois, aristocrat and fop, and through her learns a terrible secret. Together, unable to trust anyone, they race to uncover the traitors at the heart of the American Government.

1805. Thomas Jefferson is about to begin a second term, but with a new Vice President. Aaron Burr, dropped from Jefferson's ticket, is a bitter and resentful man bent on revenge. In Boston, Jean Marie Macleod, a middle-aged lawyer, is a worried man. His young and beautiful wife, Marie, seems restless and dissatisfied. Macleod decides to seek advice from a friend in New York and, while there, meets an old acquaintance, Sebastian Francisco de Miranda, South American freedom fighter, Russian secret agent and adventurer.

1850 and America is violently divided on the issue of slavery. When President Zachary Taylor dies, suddenly and under questionable circumstances, it is left to his Vice President, Millard Fillmore, a weaker man, to find ways to keep the North and the South apart. In New York, child of Irish immigrants, Matthew O’Hanlon is fired from his job as a newsman on the Herald but, surprisingly, finds work as Foreign Correspondent for the Associated Press in Panama City.

As the 19th century draws to a close America is at war - a circulation war! In New York the two great leaders of the Yellow Press, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, have gone head to head, and nothing sells papers like a real war. Such is the power of the press that they get one. American victory over Spain brings its prizes: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. In the Philippines a rebel army is already fighting for independence, but the Land of the Free doesn’t want to grant them their wish....

It's 1944. The Second World War is going the way of the Allies. Major Bill Evans is an intelligence officer in London working on the crucial Operation Overlord - the Allied invasion of Western Europe. When a monitored German agent goes missing, suspicion falls on the agent's landlady - and on Helen Duncan, a well-known medium the landlady has been consulting. Duncan seems to know more than a Scottish housewife should about certain aspects of the war. Is it her supposed access to the spirit world, or is she something more sinister - a Nazi sleeper agent?