A Taste for Treason: The Letter That Smashed a Nazi Spy Ring

When Mary Curran became suspicious of hairdresser Jessie Jordan’s frequent trips to Nazi Germany in 1937, she could not have known that she would become one of the world’s most successful amateur spycatchers. This is her untold true story, the story of how a Nazi spy’s letter, intercepted in Scotland, broke spy rings across Europe and America.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 06 October 2022
Publisher: Birlinn General

A gripping true story of wartime espionage.

Dundee, 1937. When housewife Mary Curran became suspicious of hairdresser Jessie Jordan's frequent trips to Nazi Germany, she had no idea that she was about to be drawn into an international web of espionage. Thanks to a tip off from Mary, MI5 and the FBI launched major spy hunts on both sides of the Atlantic.

This is the true story of a decade-long series of Nazi espionage plots in Britain, Europe and the United States. It shows how a Nazi spy's letter, posted in New York and intercepted in Scotland, broke spy rings across Europe and North America. And it reveals, for the first time, how that letter marked the genesis of an intelligence and security alliance that today includes the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

'Fascinating, gripping and expertly researched... an extraordinary true tale of espionage told with all the drama and panache of a spy thriller' – Michael Smith, bestselling author of The Secrets of Station X

Weight: 380g
Dimension: 153 x 232 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781780277882