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Douglas Thompson

Author, Broadcaster, International Journalist

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.

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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.

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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.

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Latest Release

Inside Out - The Extraordinary Legacy of April Ashley

Review: The Telegraph

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Review: The Daily Mail

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Coming Soon in 2024

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The legendary image of Christine Keeler

Christine Keeler’s son Seymour is campaigning to have his mother’s criminal conviction for perjury overturned. Details by clicking the link below.

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Retweet on Twitter DOUGLAS THOMPSON Retweeted
spybrary Spybrary @spybrary ·
18 Feb

Please join me in wishing Len Deighton a very happy birthday. He was born on this day in 1929!

What’s your favourite Deighton read?

Got to be Berlin Game for me.

#LenDeighton

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Retweet on Twitter DOUGLAS THOMPSON Retweeted
isberryauthor I.S. Berry | THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW @isberryauthor ·
17 Feb

So excited to read this advance copy of @paulvidich's THE POET'S GAME, about a #CIA spy uncovering a Russian plot on the US president. (& that cover!) Vidich is one of the top spy novelists writing today, in my opinion. Hits shelves 5/6/25. @AAKnopf

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Douglas Thompson

Author, Broadcaster, International Journalist

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About Douglas Thompson

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.

Four of his books are at present being developed for global television.

Another is in preparation as a theatrical presentation.

His work, published in a dozen languages, include the television-based anthology Hollywood People, and best-selling biographies of Madonna, Clint Eastwood, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dudley Moore, Sharon Stone, John Travolta, Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio.  He collaborated with the billion dollar  dancer Michael Flatley on his Sunday Times bestseller ‘Lord of the Dance’. 

With Christine Keeler, he wrote her revealing memoir The Truth At Last, an instant best-seller. He worked as a consultant on the tie-in television documentary on the Profumo Affair. In 2019 the book was revised as Secrets and Lies: The Trials of Christine Keeler and the audio version recorded by actress Sophie Cookson who plays Christine in the six-part BBC television series The Trials of Christine Keeler.

His three year collaboration with a landmark figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, Youssef Nada, was published in English to worldwide interest as ‘Inside the Muslim Brotherhood.’ The book, the first to give a balanced and inside view of the Muslim Brotherhood, arguably one of the most powerful political groups in the world, was a sensation when published in Arabic during the Arab Spring. It is now a source for scholars [The Muslim Brotherhood and the West, Martyn Frampton, Harvard University Press]. 

Working with eminent psychotherapist Pauline Sutcliffe, he told the poignant story of her brother Stuart, who named and helped found the Beatles with John Lennon.  His book ‘The Hustlers’, about gangsters and gambling in 1960s’ London, was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary. That work and  ‘Mafia Princess’, on which he worked with the title subject Marisa Merico, are two of the books being produced for television. His true crime book ‘Shadowland’ about an elaborate scheme about the American Mafia’s ‘invasion’ of Britain is another along with ‘The Dark Heart of Hollywood’ about how the Mob and the moguls cashed in at the movies.

Recent bestselling success included 2019’s ‘No Handcuffs’, a collaboration with the 1960s gangster Eddie Richardson now reformed as a collectable artist.

He is working with the German national television broadcaster ZDF on a documentary scheduled for 2020 and on two further books for publication then.

His DVD contributions to a celebration of Clint Eastwood’s career were recently commemorated in a special box set of Eastwood movies. He has been involved with many Hollywood stars on their memoirs.

Douglas Thompson, a director of one of Britain’s major literary festivals, divides his time between a medieval Suffolk village and California, where he was based as a Fleet Street correspondent and columnist for more than twenty years.