Douglas Thompson

Author, Broadcaster, International Journalist

Douglas Thompson is the author of many non-fiction books covering an eclectic mix of subjects from major Hollywood biographies to revelatory collaborations about remarkable people and events.

The author, broadcaster and international journalist, is a regular contributor to major newspapers and magazines worldwide.

In The Spotlight

Devil's Coin: My Battle to Take Down the Notorious OneCoin Cryptoqueen

The astonishing true story of the Scottish coal miner’s daughter who took on the Mafia-backed creators of the world’s biggest financial fraud and helped the FBI to convict them

Soon to be a major Hollywood film directed by Scott Z Burns

‘In the 1990s, Erin Brockovich showed what a difference one smart, angry woman can make in a world that marginalized her. Jen McAdam stepped forward in our time to shut down a diabolical fraud that preys those most desperate.’ Scott Z Burns, Director (Contagion and The Bourne Ultimatum)

As featured on the hit BBC podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen

Jen McAdam was a victim of the OneCoin global cryptocurrency fraud, which stole an estimated $27 billion from ordinary people around the world. The evil genius of the scam was its target, society’s ‘unbanked,’ not wealthy investors, and it robbed millions of their livelihood and futures. The poor became poorer.

The brutal plundering led by self-styled Cryptoqueen Ruja Ignatova defied all legal and banking barriers bamboozling financial authorities ― until Jen McAdam fought back.

With a £15,000 inheritance from her father, saved from a careful life in a west of Scotland mining town, Jen wanted to invest wisely for her family’s future and was enraptured by the possibilities offered by OneCoin’s promotional material and convincing endorsements from celebrities and financial institutions. They, like all Dr Ruja’s flamboyant promises, were bogus.

Jen McAdam was the first victim brave enough to fight back and despite death threats and an intimidating campaign to shut her down, and through a debilitating illness, strived tirelessly for justice – for herself, her family and friends, and the millions around the world who lost everything. She created and continues to lead victims ’support groups and in 2023, as the OneCoin bandits were being punished by international courts, spearheaded a move to get financial compensation for the many whose life hopes were cruelly crushed by the Cryptoqueen.

This is a true David-and-Goliath story. It shows us the power we can have as individuals, even when things seem hopeless.

ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
Shortlist 2024

Available Now

Reckless: Sex, Lies and JFK

Drawing on new interviews and previously hidden police and intelligence files, Reckless finally reveals the full corruption of America’s Camelot.

‘Reads like James Ellroy’– Daily Telegraph

‘JFK didn’t hesitate to employ deception, espionage and covert action’ – Timothy Naftali, Wall Street Journal

John F. Kennedy’s life is promoted by sentimental and careless myth-makers as pure legend. But a sinister shadow lies across it.

His death was such a shocking event that the vivid memory of his assassination still blinds us to much of what went before. When it is recalled, it is almost always seen through the prism of that single, terrible day in Dallas, obscuring the dark corners of his time and government.

For JFK, power was soundbites over policy, the White House a fairytale castle, and the President manifested as a hypersexualised movie star. As with Hollywood, the willing suspension of belief was required.

Reality imposes no such limits.

Drawing on essential new material derived from decades-long investigations, Detective Mike Rothmiller and Douglas Thompson shatter the secrets and lies with a revelatory and dramatic true-life thriller focusing on JFK and Robert F. Kennedy, both before and after they bought the White House.

All the usual suspects, from FBI titan J. Edgar Hoover and billionaire Howard Hughes to CIA rogue agents and Mob hitmen appear in a narrative which sweeps from wartime London to the salons of Washington, from the bedrooms of Hollywood to the torture chambers and jungles of central America, and on to revolutionary Cuba and the tragic, bloody political carousel of Vietnam.

Latest Release

Inside Out - The Extraordinary Legacy of April Ashley

‘April Ashley was born, aged twenty-five, on 12 May 1960. It was a difficult birth at the Clinique du Parc on rue Lapébie, a back street running parallel to the admired avenue d’Amade in Casablanca, on a day when the Moroccan sunshine was behaving the way the guidebooks say it should . . .’

Through her own – often bloody-minded – determination and the medical skill of others, April Ashley became the woman she had always believed herself to be.

And for half a dozen decades she soared around, over and above momentous and turbulent times, difficult, and changing times when, finally, who you wanted to be and who you could be became the cultural topic of the day.

She overcame opprobrium and penury and became renowned and celebrated for one specific achievement: being April Ashley.

This raw, moving and funny memoir reveals April’s life as never before.

Read in PDF format