Oliver Dowson - Author

26/11/2025

After months where my life and thought patterns have largely been dedicated to matters medical, I'm finally getting back to writing - as I have always done, for pleasure. The other day, I discovered this article from The Conversation US that perfectly describes my writing philosophy. Well worth a read!

Resilience is often presented as feats of bravery and endurance. But everyday practices like journaling, drafting a text or even writing a to-do list are manifestations of a capacity to adapt.

25/08/2025

A lifetime of globetrotting and close scrapes, but nothing prepared me for my latest adventure: a fall from a safari vehicle in Zambia that left me with a broken hip. Three operations later (with one more to go), I've spent the last two months learning to walk again with crutches—a true blessing and a curse. I'm easing back into writing with a new well of experiences to draw from, and I've written all about life on crutches in my latest post. Check it out and say hi in the comments—I've missed you all!

In June 2025, atthe end of a safari holiday, I fell and broke my hip. Of the many new experiences I've had, walking with crutches has proved frustrating...

22/08/2025

Delighted to have 'Spies on the Silk Road', the third in my Repurposed Spies series, picked as one of The Wishing Shelf's Books of the Month!

01/04/2025

So here I am, sitting in my hidey-hole garden room, writing about real human spies, while all the time that little device that looks like a speaker in the corner is listening to my every word.... or is it?

As the world becomes an ever more dangerous place, it's worth reading this article and considering one's need for discretion...

In the spy world, one of the most effective ways to gather intelligence about someone is by bugging their private space at their home or workplace. That is typically hard to do. Legally, it requires obtaining a search warrant after demonstrating...

31/03/2025

Recently I was thrilled to be interviewed by Hannah Murray for her weekly radio show The Book Show on Talk Radio Europe. We talked about my latest thriller, Spies on the Silk Road, the third in the Repurposed Spies series, and some of my more interesting travel experiences!
Listen on my YouTube channel at at https://bit.ly/treinterview

30/03/2025

Terrible to see the destruction in Myanmar (Burma) - what little news gets through. Back in 2016 when I last visited, the country was calm and opening up to tourism. Since then, military takeover, civil war and now an earthquake. So sad. I thought I'd share some memories of a trip in happier times.

28/03/2025

Proud to have won the Literary Titan book award for Spies on the Silk Road! .... and I can reveal to the reviewer that I'm already progressing well with the fourth book in the Repurposed Spies series, provisionally titled Spies in Shanghai, that I hope to publish later this year.

15/02/2025

Thank you The Wishing Shelf Independent Book Award for making my latest novel - Spies on the Silk Road, the third in the Repurposed Spies series - a finalist in the Adult Fiction category of the 2024 awards!

The Wishing Shelf awards are recognised as probably the best book awards in the UK open to independently-published authors, with hundreds of entrants and hundreds of judges, so this is a real honour.

Spies on the Silk Road is on sale now through all bookshops and online book platforms - and is currently rated at 4.6 stars on Amazon.

07/01/2025

Very happy today to see a new and very kind review for the first book in my 'Repurposed Spies' series, that I published nearly two years ago. The reviewer goes on to say he's now reading the second in the series, Spies on Safari - and there's now a third, Spies on the Silk Road.

More reviews encouraged!

06/01/2025

My latest review - The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter.
Despite the length (and the author’s note at the end says it was originally even longer), for me it didn’t feel a page too long – I was absorbed from the very beginning. It’s an MI5 spy novel, but one has to suspend credulity, and espionage aficionados who expect a degree of verifiable accuracy may be disappointed as there are just too many entirely unrealistic situations. But hey, it’s a novel, and an extraordinarily enjoyable one.
The heroine, Slim Parsons, is a complicated soul and I found her very likeable. She’s an MI5 operative in the way that James Bond is, in the sense that she does crazy things but always comes out on top. The difference is that she does those things in and around Milton Keynes, frankly not an 007-exotic location, which pulls everything rather closer to earth.
It’s difficult to write more without giving away elements of the plot, but it’s very up-to-date, with political elements and world events easy to find real world parallels to, a billionaire villain and artificial intelligence. It seems to me likely that it was written with the expectation in mind of turning it into a TV series or film, but it’s a real novel, not what I call an ‘expanded screenplay’. Highly recommended.
Full review on Goodreads

5/5: Despite the length (and the author’s note at the end says it was originally even longer), for me it didn’t feel a page too long – I was absorbed from the very beginning. It’s an MI5 spy novel, but one has to suspend credulity, and espionage aficionados who expect a degree of verifiable ...

27/12/2024

My review today - Karla's Choice, by Nick Harkaway - as posted on Goodreads. Most reviewers seem to love it, I'm not such a fan.

My conclusion: "If Harkaway is a great writer (and the evidence is that he certainly could be) I feel he should step away from ostentatiously hanging on to his father’s coattails and develop his own style and story line."

If you've read it, tell me what YOU thought.

3/5: I’m at something of a loss as to what to make of this book. Nick Harkaway, son of John le Carré, has unashamedly attempted both to match his father’s writing style and “plug a gap” in the fictional history of George Smiley. In the first endeavour, he undoubtedly succeeds, though I felt...

13/12/2024

My book review for today: The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction by Robert Goddard.
"I loved both the previous books by Robert Goddard that I read, ‘This is the night they come for you', set in Algiers, and ‘The fine art of Invisible Detection', set in Japan. This one, ‘The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction', is the second book featuring Umiko Wade, somewhat unwillingly thrust into the role of private investigator on the death of her boss, Kodaka, but finding herself surprisingly adept and enthusiastic.
"The mystery she is tasked with unravelling revolves around a disappeared “earthquake sensitive” and promptly sent me off to a search engine to learn that yes, such individuals are said to exist, and there really was a major earthquake and tsunami that set off the chain of events fictionalised in the book. It becomes easy to start thinking of Umiko as a Japanese version of Miss Marple, but she is a far deeper and even more resourceful character, highlighted when, in the latter half of the book, the action moves to California.
"I particularly enjoy books set in exotic locations, perhaps as that's the approach I take in my own novels, but what really stood out to me was the quality of the prose. I see that Goddard has written many standalone novels and I look forward into delving into another."
The link below takes you to Goodreads, where you'll find other reviews by me - and thousands of others.

Umiko Wada never set out to be a private detective, let…