Alan Johnson's debut novel pre-empted by Wildfire

Wildfire has pre-empted former Home Secretary and memoirist Alan Johnson’s debut novel, The Late Train to Gipsy Hill.

Publishing director Alex Clarke acquired world rights to the novel via Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander Associates.

Johnson is the author of four prize-winning memoirs, including This Boy about his childhood. The Late Train to Gipsy Hill will be Johnson’s first work of fiction, and Wildfire Books will publish it in September 2021.

Billed as "the perfect thriller", the novel tells the story of a young man, Gary Nelson, whose life is turned on its head when, on his commute home, he has a chance encounter with a young waitress whom he has noticed on the train each day but never spoken to.

The synopsis reads: "There is so much more to Arina than meets the eye, and when Gary does finally speak to her, it sparks a chain of events that leads to him finding himself on the run from Russian secret agents, mobsters and even the Metropolitan Police. The Late Train to Gipsy Hill is a masterful thriller and the start of an exciting new direction for this highly respected writer and former politician."

Clarke said: "Alan Johnson has written the perfect thriller. The Late Train to Gipsy Hill will have readers on the edge of their seats from the very first page, but it is also utterly charming, heartwarming and refreshingly original. We are over the Moon to be welcoming Alan to the Wildfire list."

Johnson said: "I’m delighted to be publishing my first thriller with Alex Clarke and his gang at Wildfire. They have such determination and energy, just like the gang that my hero becomes embroiled with on that late train to Gipsy Hill."

Johnson, who was Labour MP for 20 years before retiring before the 2017 general election, has sold 377,002 books for £3.1m in the UK through Nielsen BookScan, with This Boy shifting 179,424 copies in paperback. The childhood memoir was published by Transworld in 2013 and went on to win the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and the Orwell Prize. His second volume of memoirs, Please Mr Postman (2014), won the National Book Club award for Best Biography. The final book in his memoir trilogy, The Long and Winding Road (2016), won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir. 

The Late Train to Gipsy Hill will be published in hardback, trade paperback, e-book and audio in September 2021.