Hellyer's Coup

A series with promise. The storyline is thoroughly researched and the scene setting vibrant. Hellyer is an engaging protagonist, courageous and conflicted, but also a libertine and bon viveur.
Financial Times

A series that provokes both laughter and reflection. The assignment leads Hellyer into a moral conundrum for which he has no answer - is facilitating one war crime to prevent others morally justified? And, as he collides with sincerely committed people on all sides, he is forced to wonder what his own motives are.
Morning Star




Nick Hellyer faces the spy's ultimate dilemma. He is tasked to infiltrate a chemical weapons programme and destroy it. But in the process, lives will be lost.

His struggles with issues of complicity and guilt are set against a background of the guerrilla insurgency in Mozambique and the army plan to overthrow the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974. He succeeds in aligning himself with the coup plotters and participates in the virtually bloodless overthrow of the government. However, the tally of other deaths associated with him continues to pile up.

'People have died because of my actions, but not through my intentions.'

An assassination target, fallout from a previous mission, he struggles to separate his lover's professional and personal motivations. Just as his participation in nerve gas trials in Mozambique forces him to query his moral compass.

If you enjoy tension and drama, being immersed in a new culture, feeling and experiencing action through a spy's eyes in a tumultuous revolutionary period, read Hellyer's Coup now.

For fans of John le Carré, Charles Cumming, Mick Herron, Philip Kerr and Adam LeBor. Hellyer's Coup is the second Nick Hellyer espionage novel by Philip Prowse. The first in the series, Hellyer's Trip, was reviewed in the Morning Star:

"This author knows and conveys his chosen period and place well, aided by a central character who displays exactly the right balance between naivety and foxiness."