ROBERT WILTON

According to the bio on his website: "Robert Wilton was Private Secretary to the UK Secretary of State for Defence, advisor to the Prime Minister of Kosovo in the period before the country's independence and head of an international human rights mission in Albania, and has lived and worked in the Balkans for most of the last dozen years. He also writes on the history and culture of the region, and translates Albanian poetry. He's co-founder of The Ideas Partnership charity, working with marginalized Balkan communities.

The first of his Comptrollerate-General literary historical thrillers won the inaugural Historical Writers Association/Goldsboro Crown for best debut novel. There have been four in the series, all critically-acclaimed. His Gentleman Adventurer novels are a series of historical entertainments exploring the seedier aspects of espionage and mystery in the years before the First World War."