Tom Ardies was a reporter and columnist for the Vancouver Sun during the 60’s, a thriller novelist in the 1970s & 80s, and an acclaimed crime writer (under the pseudonym “Jack Trolley”) in the 1990s. His spy novel Kosygin Is Coming, was adapted into the movie called Russian Roulette starring George Segal and Denholm Elliott. He died in 2020 at the age of 89.
An obscenely wealthy businessman, who has a strange relationship with his adult daughter, is running for President of the United States and intelligence agencies fear that he may be a Soviet puppet. Sound familiar? No, these aren't the Trumps. But in 1971, author Tom Ardies saw the future in a wild, political spy novel that has now become the perfect thriller for our time.
Tom Ardies is the nearest thing to Ian Fleming and Mickey Spillane that we have.
Written in a lean, wryly humorous style, the fourth Tommy Donahoo novel is short on pages but long on action. The biggest mystery is why Tom Ardies hasn't won the Edgar Award yet.
Trolley has a knack for writing taut thrillers. He brings the action right down to the last, breathless second, and he does it with considerable skill, humor and style.
Trolley is like a noir voice out of the past, fast talking, sardonic, generating a great deal of suspense.