
A Reluctant Spy Wins McDermid Debut Award
18 July 2025
A Reluctant Spy, David Goodman's gripping spy thriller has won the McDermid Debut Award. The McDermid Debut Award honours Val McDermid, who helped co-found the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in 2003, and aims to continue her legacy, celebrating and platforming the best debut crime writers in the UK.
More information about A Reluctant Spy is below.
A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman
Published in CD and MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook in March.
Jamie Tulloch is a successful exec at a top tech company, but he has a secret. He's had a helping hand from the Legend Programme, a secret intelligence effort to prepare impenetrable backstories for undercover agents. Real people, willing to hand over their identities for a few weeks in return for plum jobs, influence and access. Arriving at a French airport ready to hand over his identity, Jamie finds his primary contact dead, the agent who's supposed to step into his life AWOL and his options for escape non-existent. Pitched into a deadly mission on hostile territory, Jamie must contend with a rogue Russian general, arms dealers, elite hackers, CIA tac-ops and the discovery of a brewing plan for war. Dangerously out of his depth, can Jamie play himself well enough to avoid being killed - and to avert a lethal global conflict?