Review: The Windsor Secret by David Cullen

When I bought The Windsor Secret I was looking for answers, mistaking it for fact. Make no mistake about it, David Cullen has penned a book that he calls faction, and there is a lot of fact contained on the pages. Where the line lies between fact and fiction, hence faction, is less clear. What is clear is that this book is fast paced, dark, dangerous, and a very good read.

The Windsor Secret is a continuation of The Mesrine Conclusion 18 years on and someone is killing to find out the secret, a fact that is not in evidence when the police begin investigating three murders that seem to be linked. Do they have a serial killer or is it just coincidence?

The conclusion to the investigation will surprise you, as will some of the politics involved in the special division that handles all things foreign in the French government. Cullen writes as though he knows the world of foreign affairs in foreign governments and he knows Carlos the Jackal, aka Illich Ramírez Sánchez from Venezuela, one of the most ruthless assassins in the world.

The Jackal is another piece of this international puzzle and there are two women who are out to catch him and put him down. One of the women escorted him to France to be imprisoned for life in solitary confinement, a confinement that the Jackal never saw since he was switched with a look alike.

There are many pieces to this international puzzle and Cullen lines them up and knocks them down with ease and style. According to Cullen, the Secret is what got Lady Di killed and what killed the Duchess of Windsor in her bedroom as she slept and many others who have died under mysterious circumstances and the Jackal was the agent of death. There is nothing mysterious about The Windsor Secret. It is a straight forward international espionage thriller that gives enough fact to make the fiction plausible -- and very real. It is as if Cullen has given the reader an inside tour of the British royal family and the private lives of people in and out of the news. I highly recommend The Windsor Secret for its artful blend of fact and fiction. It is a ride you won't soon forget.