JAYE ROTHMAN

According to the bio on her website: "aye Rothman has always had a thing for espionage. It could be because she grew up in England during the Cold War. Or maybe it was all those James Bond books and movies. Her love for the thrilling characters and nonstop action was pretty much a done deal by her teenage years.

There was one problem she had with the espionage stories of her growing-up years, though. There was no female 007. She wondered why no one thought to write about a woman MI6 spy. Moreover, she never thought that she would be the one to eventually write one.

Then, in 1981 something happened that changed all that. Jaye was on a flight from Johannesburg to Lisbon, which stopped in Kinshasa to refuel. While there, passengers were informed that the plane needed repairs. So, they had to spend three days in Kinshasa until the replacement craft arrived. Because they were in transit, they had to surrender their passports and were driven under guard to a hotel. The phones and faxes were non-functioning due to a power outage. To Jaye’s active imagination, it could have been a scene from one of the thrilling James Bond books she loved so much.

And there, in a hotel on the outskirts of Kinshasa, the concept for the book, The Hell of Osirak was born. After many years of percolating the idea, Nikki Sinclair, MI6 officer and lesbian protagonist, eventually came to life.

Jaye writes spy thrillers set during the Cold War when the dark shadow of communism was cast over Europe. They feature a woman MI6 spy, a female equivalent of James Bond. The stories are gripping and filled with tense excitement interlaced with a romantic subplot.

Pre-Covid, she visited many European cities and these form the vibrant, stunning setting for her stories. This helps give extra depth to her stories and helped with factual descriptions.

Jaye lives in the small coastal town north of Auckland with her devoted rescue dog, Molly the Collie. She spends her time on the computer tapping away in the exciting world of espionage. So far, Jaye has written eight books featuring the woman spy, Nikki Sinclair. Perhaps, what is most thrilling about Jaye Rothman’s books is that many of them are based on actual events, the bombing of Osirak by the Israelis, just one of them."