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

LIBERAL-FASCISM: NONSENSE OR THE WAY WE ARE NOW: PART TWO

(Last week we examined the situation where benign liberal ideals have been allied to sweeping regulation enforced by law reinforced by a set of all-embracing values and principles which attempts to direct how people behave and interact with each other. This has been described as liberal-fascism. This week we look ...
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LIBERAL FASCISM: NONSENSE OR THE WAY WE ARE NOW? PART ONE

Recent Meikle’s Blogs looking at regulation (REGULATION AND INSPECTION: ALL FUR COAT AND NO KNICKERS, posted 16th December 2009), reaction to the recent severe weather in Britain (Risky Weather: posted 19th January) and last week’s blog examining the current moral panic regarding alcohol use (The Trouble with Alcohol: posted 26thJanuary), ...
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THE TROUBLE WITH ALCOHOL

No-one living in the UK at the moment could fail to notice the high profile that is being placed on what has been described sardonically as “our love affair with alcohol”. In the last ten days alone here in Scotland we have had an academic report which states that the ...
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RISKY WEATHER

The thaw has set in (for now) here in the west of Scotland, but from just before Christmas until last week the UK has been experiencing its worst winter weather since… well that depended on which paper or TV programme you were watching which varied somewhat on what year the ...
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NEW YEAR, NEW POLITICS, NEW THINKING

Happy New Year! But not I fear a very prosperous one. This year in the UK a general election will have to be held probably in the spring. At the moment the two main political parties are wooing the British electorate by assuring them that they will be able to ...
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REGULATION AND INSPECTION: ALL FUR COAT AND NO KNICKERS

Our culture and society are awash with regulation and inspection. Virtually every organisation in every walk of life is now subject to intensive levels of scrutiny and compliance backed up by legislatively enforced regulatory regimes. All this, in theory, to ensure that organisations are performing as they should do and ...
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