About Adam
Welcome to my website. I am a British author, journalist and editorial and media trainer. My clients include the Financial Times, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Citywire, the Arvon Foundation and Mishcon de Reya. I have more than thirty years experience as a journalist and I have written fifteen critically-acclaimed books – eight works of non-fiction and seven thrillers. I now review thrillers for the Financial Times and television for the Critic magazine. I also contribute to The Economist, The Times and other publications.
I grew up in London in the 1970s and studied at Leeds University, where I also edited the student newspaper. After graduating I enjoyed a peripatetic career on several Fleet Street newspapers with assignments that ranged from seeking London’s best dry Martini to investigating Nazi war criminals who found sanctuary in Britain.
I first moved to Budapest in 1991 to cover the aftermath of the collapse of Communism and the re-emergence of central and eastern Europe. I also spent much time in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, covering the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. I relocated to Paris for a year to write my first novel, which eventually became The Budapest Protocol, then I returned to Budapest. Over the years I have worked in more than 30 countries and enjoyed some hair-raising adventures along the way. I’ve been arrested, shot at and tear-gassed, seen countries die and new nations born, and hitched a ride in a prime minister’s airplane. I once met a man in a bar in Odessa who tried to sell me a MiG-29 – with extra missiles thrown in – a bargain at $8 million. Nowadays I live a much more sedate life in London with my family.
My books have been published in fifteen languages including Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Hungarian. These include Hitler’s Secret Bankers, which exposed Swiss economic complicity with Nazi Germany and which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize; a biography of Slobodan Milosevic, now regarded as the standard work on his life and City of Oranges, which recounts the lives of Arab and Jewish families in Jaffa, and which was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize. Hitler’s Secret Bankers and City of Oranges have both been republished recently in new updated editions by Head of Zeus.
Tower of Basel, my investigative history of the Bank for International Settlements, the world’s most secretive and influential financial institution, is published in the US and Britain by PublicAffairs. It’s quite a story.
Complicity with Evil, my investigation into the United Nation’s failure to stop genocide, helped inspire my first thriller series. The Geneva Option is published by Telegram in Britain and HarperCollins in the US. The Washington Stratagem and The Reykjavik Assignment, the second and third books in the trilogy, are published by HarperCollins in the US and Head of Zeus in the UK.
I recently completed a trio of highly-praised detective thrillers set in Budapest, featuring Balthazar Kovacs, a Gypsy detective in the Budapest murder squad. The stories unfold in the autumn and winter of 2015-16, when Budapest was the epicentre of the refugee crisis. District VIII, Kossuth Square and Dohany Street are published by Head of Zeus. Kossuth Square was a Times Crime Fiction Book of the Month, while Dohany Street was a Sunday Times Crime Club choice. Do get in touch and let me know your thoughts if you read one of my books – I’m always pleased to hear from readers. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @adamlebor.