David Jarvis went to art college in the 1970s before setting up an international planning practice, which he ran successfully for forty years. This took him around the world from Trinidad to Croatia and from France to Saudi Arabia, eventually producing spatial plans for entire countries. His canvases just got bigger and bigger.
He has now retired to Wiltshire to write and drink wine, not necessarily in that order.
His novels are thought-provoking and fast-moving geopolitical thrillers but with a light touch and a dusting of dry wit. The latest series follows the exploits of Michaela ‘Mike’ Kingdom, a London-based CIA analyst, who tends to suffer from selective deafness when given instructions by her head of station.
David never intended to create Mike Kingdom; she just turned up one day and took over.
Each novel has at its heart an important issue.
The Tip of the Iceberg is set against a hypothetical review of the Antarctic Treaty and the suspicion that oil has been discovered off South Georgia. All of the territorial claims which have been suspended for over sixty years are now back on the table.
The novel begins with a faked photo which has devasting consequences.
Oil executive Charles Yelland’s perfect life is turned upside down when a newspaper publishes a photo of an illegal exploration rig in Antarctica supposedly owned by his company – except the photo is a fake.
While Yelland tries to deal with the devastating personal and professional impact of the deception, global political leaders rush to establish if oil has been found beneath the ice. If so, should they tear up the decades-old Antarctic treaty and stake a claim for a share of the vast potential mineral riches there?
CIA analyst Michaela ‘Mike’ Kingdom was never a field agent. She’s also recovering from life-changing injuries and mental trauma from the car crash that killed her husband. So why does she accept the challenge from her former boss in the Agency to hunt down the kidnappers of Charles Yelland’s daughter? Can Mike overcome the dark forces determined to tear apart a longstanding international agreement and open up Antarctica for exploitation?
This Is Not a Pipe is concerned with the EU’s dependency on natural gas from Algeria transported through three pipelines under the Mediterranean Sea.
When the brother-in-law of Mike Kingdom goes missing, she has very little to work with. Last heard of in Málaga three weeks earlier, she doesn’t know what name he was using, what country he was working in, or what he was doing. This is not going to be a routine missing person investigation.
Mike is reluctantly forced back into the field when a British government minister is killed in France, en route to Spain, but the death offers Mike a vital first clue to solving her brother-in-law’s disappearance. How are the two incidents connected?
The trail for answers leads Mike across Europe and into North Africa, where the competition for control of the region’s oil and mineral resources brings a new level of danger for her. Can she unravel the mystery before hidden forces silence her.
The Violin and Candlestick is the third in the series, it is set in an area that David Jarvis knows well, having worked throughout the Middle East since the 1980s. Iranian influence on the Gulf states and the Straits of Hormuz provides the backdrop as the CIA’s main asset in the Middle East is murdered.
Habib Murchison is a hugely successful but enigmatic businessman. A Canadian-born convert to Islam, his wealth grew from the building boom across the Gulf states. But Murchison also has a secret identity. He’s one of the West’s most important intelligence assets in the troubled region.
In London, outgoing ‘Five Eyes’ boss Leonard De Vries is under pressure. Recalled to Langley to face questions from his CIA bosses, he senses he’ll need off-the-books help and calls again on former colleague Mike Kingdom to sort things out, along with ex-CIA operative, Chris Crippen.
Mike and Chris are faced with a nightmare: Murchison is dead, his two grieving sons are being threatened, and then Leonard goes missing. Never trained as a field operative, Mike faces a race to find out what Murchison was hiding, who is prepared to kill to keep it secret, and if there is anyone that she can truly trust?
In The Mongoose and the Cobra, the son of an American billionairess is kidnapped In Switzerland. She owns the company which lays the undersea communication cables on which the world depends. Her late husband was Basque, and the next planned cable will run from Bilbao via the UK to the USA. What do the kidnappers want? Mike Kingdom gets involved just as her own project, tracking a major cocaine shipment to Europe, is about to reach a climax.
Valentina Ortiz, the largest political donor in the USA, has made many enemies. That’s made her overprotective of her two sons: her youngest, Chuck, is working under a false name as an analyst for the CIA in London, and the eldest, Diego, never leaves her side as she directs her global business empire.
It was a mother’s worst nightmare when Chuck fails to turn up for work in London and the alarm is raised. But when Diego is kidnapped in Switzerland, Valentina faces a mother’s worst nightmare. Desperate about the fate of her sons, she’ll stop at nothing to save them. The US President’s chief of staff is soon pressuring Leonard de Vries, the CIA director in London: “Find Chuck and get him somewhere safe – real safe.”
Leonard turns to the one asset he truly trusts, analyst Mike Kingdom, who was the last person to see Chuck alive when he turned up unannounced at her home in Oxfordshire. Why was he convinced his life was in danger? And what did he mean when he announced he was “going to see the tulips”? The search for an answer to that riddle will propel Mike on a frightening and life-changing journey.
The Green Feathers is set against threats to the world leaders attending the next Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM), taking place in the Caribbean; this includes the British king and prime minister.
Two shots ring out causing panic on the steps of the Mahaica Convention Centre in Georgetown, Guyana.
Prior to CHOGM, Tina Persad, an MI6 agent with Caribbean experience, had been sent to find out whether the rumoured threats to the meeting were real or not. Then, days before it was due to start, she had disappeared without trace. Mike Kingdom may have been the last person to see her alive when they had a drink together in The Green Feathers. She needs to find her friend while keeping her own project on track.
When a butterfly flaps its wings in the Caribbean, it causes storms in Europe.
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