Robert Peston launches fiction career in two-book deal with Zaffre

Bonnier imprint Zaffre Books has signed a two-book, six-figure deal with Robert Peston, ITV's political editor. His first novel, The Whistleblower, will be published in September 2021. 

Ben Willis, publishing director for crime and thrillers at Zaffre Books, acquired world rights to two titles from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown. 

Set in the late 1990s in the run-up to an election, The Whistleblower will follow journalist Gil Peck as he navigates the corridors of power to bag the biggest stories. But when Gil’s sister Clare dies in an apparent hit-and-run, he begins to believe it was no accident. Clare knew some of the most sensitive secrets in government – could one of them have got her killed?

The Whistleblower will be supported by a "major" national marketing and publicity campaign.

Willis commented: "Robert Peston is the most respected political journalist working in the UK today, with decades of experience and dozens of major awards for his work. And he has taken all of this unprecedented knowledge of the inner workings of politics, business and power and produced an extraordinarily high-concept, timely and page-turning thriller. The Whistleblower does not read like a debut novel at all, and is as skilled and gripping as blockbusters such as Robert Harris’ The Ghost and John Grisham’s The Firm. I am very proud to be working with Robert on the launch of what I know will be a brilliant and long thriller writing career. Robert’s fans, and wider readers of thrillers across the world: prepare to be blown away."

Peston said: "I never thought that the four non-fiction books I have written were in any way an apprenticeship for the much harder challenge of novel-writing, but I’m delighted to have been given this opportunity by Bonnier Books UK.

"Those four books were collectively an attempt to chronicle the political and economic forces that have created today's world — a world that often feels stranger than fiction. And because the events we are living through are so extraordinary, I decided that just possibly fiction would provide an alternative way of explaining how we got here. So I decided to set my thriller in the 1990s. It is when today's generation of political and business leaders came of age. It is when the traditional dividing lines between political parties became confusingly blurred.

"The title, The Whistleblower, is deliberately ambiguous. At the core of the book is a woman of deep principle who pays the biggest possible price for doing the right thing and about how the powerful and rich make the decisions that affect our lives. Protagonist Gil, a political journalist, always believed the British way of catastrophe was born of cock up, not conspiracy. But that’s all about to change.

"But the book is not a sermon and is supposed to be a proper thriller and fun. My favourite writers in the genre are the giants of the past – Dorothy L Sayers, Conan Doyle and John Buchan – and the present: John le Carré, Sarah Paretsky, John Grisham and Robert Harris. They set the impossible standard."

Peston has published three non-fiction titles with Hodder: Who Runs Britain? (2008), How Do We Fix This Mess? (2013) and WTF? (2018). He has published one title with Short Books: Brown’s Britain (2005).