ABOUT ALEX

Alex was formerly a CEO of two community based third sector social care organisations in Glasgow. He also spent many years working in the addiction services in the city and has just recently retired. Despite this he still provides a consultancy on social care and community based issues.

Alex’s main interest is writing, and he has had several non-fiction pieces published in newspapers and journals which have been related to his work and career.

Alex published his first novel Deception Road which is a political thriller set in Glasgow last year. It is available on Amazon. Deception Road is the first of a four-part projected quartet of novels centred on the career of MI5 officer, Eddie Macintyre. The second novel in the quartet, Caledonia Snack, will be released this year. The third and fourth novels in the series, Holy Loch and Enchantment and Conspiracy will be published within the next year.

Each book focuses on particular operations which Eddie has been involved in over the past thirty years. Deception Road is set in the present day while Caledonia Smack is set in the early 1990s and centres on drugs, gun, spooks and Irish paramilitaries in Glasgow. Holy Loch is about a Soviet spy ring at the old US nuclear submarine base in Scotland at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and finally Enchantment and Conspiracy is set against the background of Eddie being recruited to act as an informer for MI5 on the far left in Glasgow in the late 70s before he became an actual agent for them. Essentially, the quartet is a biography of Eddie based on a few key episodes of his life in the secret world.

Alex also writes a regular blog and various other pieces, mostly but exclusively about the world of intelligence and its impact on all of us which he will be posting regularly on the website.

Alex has a wide range of interests including reading, obviously espionage novels, but he also enjoys history, popular science and books on contemporary politics. He is a keen music fan with a wide-ranging and eclectic taste including jazz, soul, dance, prog rock, punk rock, psychedelic rock and easy listening. He also enjoys walking and dining out. He lives, writes and socialises in Glasgow, a city which is not only his home but which he regards as a “dynamic, vibrant place to write in and about.”

BOOKS

DECEPTION ROAD

Deception Road available now in Amazon Top MI5 agent Eddie Macintyre and his team are tailing a terrorist cell in Glasgow when a van carrying al-Qaeda activists on a dummy-run explodes in the city-centre, causing mass casualties. Hours earlier Eddie’s team had confirmed the van as being explosives free. Now he faces the terrifying possibility that his team’s surveillance operation has been sabotaged via an al-Qaeda infiltrated mole. But suspicion quickly fastens onto Eddie and he is catapulted down a nightmare road of treachery and deception, and Eddie must use all his experience and resources to survive. BUY NOW

CALEDONIA SMACK

Caledonia Smack book coming sooin A Police and MI5 raid on a flat in Glasgow led by MI5 officer, Eddie McIntyre, intended to capture a senior IRA commander meeting with a Glasgow drug gang leader, finds instead seven people dead from heroin overdoses. Against the background of the developing Northern Irish peace process in the early 1990s, an MI5 plot to entrap the IRA with a vicious Glasgow drugs gang leads to gang warfare, overdoses and Eddie’s efforts to extricate himself from the chaos that is unleashed.
   

Reviews

What readers from Amazon are saying
A strong plot, anchored in convincing political, psychological and technical detail. Don't know if Meikle is ex-Secret Service - but it all rings true!

This is gripping stuff – an engaging story very well told. It could be made into an excellent film. The action is exciting and the scenarios are inventive and interesting. I look forward to reading more from this exciting new novelist.

This is gripping stuff – an engaging story very well told. It could be made into an excellent film. The action is exciting and the scenarios are inventive and interesting. I look forward to reading more from this exciting new novelist.

LATEST FROM ALEX

THE WEST OF SCOTLAND: NO GO AREA FOR TORIES

Reports of the imminent demise of the Labour Party have been greatly exaggerated. Virtually up until polling day on the 6th May, the majority of commentators had Labour staring a worst defeat than that under Michael Foot in 1983. Despite a revived Liberal-Democrat threat and a washed out, tired looking ...
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WANTED: A HUNG PARLIAMENT FOR A BAD HANGOVER

There is one small consolation for Gordon Brown if, as is now widely predicted, he is no longer Prime Minister after May 6th. This comes in the form of the widely reported remarks attributed to the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, that whoever wins the next election ...
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THE CULTURE THAT CRIED WOLF

The story of the boy who cried wolf is primal, told to us in childhood and virtually etched in our synapses. It is a formative fable whose impact is universal, one of those stores which, while ostensibly aimed at children, actually help to set out rules of good conduct and ...
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METHADONE ISN’T PERFECT, BUT IT EASES PAN AND SAVES LIVES

(This week’s blog is the basis of an article which was printed in the Sunday Herald Scotland on 25th April 2010.) Methadone, the substitute drug for heroin, has come in for some severe criticism of late here in Scotland. The main brunt of that criticism is that we are simply substituting ...
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EDUCATING, TEACHING LEARNING, MAINPULATING

The following is now virtually anathema in many modern educational circles. A teacher or lecturer walks into a classroom/lecture theatre. She delivers a lesson/lecture based on prepared notes consisting of a combination of an established, ‘traditional’ body of knowledge in a particular subject area enhanced by the most up-to-date results ...
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THE UK GENERAL ELECTION: THE GREAT UNSAID

The 2010 UK general election is underway and campaigning is in full swing. No-one can accurately forecast the result, but for the first time since the 1970s there is a real prospect that no one political party will secure a majority and, therefore a hung parliament will ensue with parties ...
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