LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 52

The former civil servant’s debut is the story of a conman who hopes
to pull off one last job…
Like the protagonist of his first novel,The Good Liar, Nicholas Searle is
an international man of mystery. Tantalisingly, his author bio states “he
is not allowed to say more about his career than that he was a senior civil
servant for many years”.
It was spying, wasn’t it? Searle squirms in his sharp grey suit. “I was
working on security matters and that’s the limit of what I can say. You
can press me on it if you like, but there are good legal, contractual and
ethical reasons for me not talking about my previous work.” The frown
softens into a chuckle. “It’s ridiculous, but that’s the position I’m in – as
Michael Dobbs might say, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’”
This “remarkably rewarding” job took him from Cornwall to London to
New Zealand and back, until 2011, when Searle decided to move to
Yorkshire with his wife and concentrate on writing. He honed his skills
with an online creative writing course run by literary agency Curtis
Brown. Propelled by a mix of stubbornness and bravado, he sent his
manuscript to the CEO of the company, Jonny Geller, agent of the likes
of John le Carré and David Mitchell.
Geller got back to him “immediately”, and within 10 days they had deals
with HarperCollins in the US and Penguin in the UK. “It was fantastic
and kind of befuddling. I thought it must be a wind-up, because this kind
of stuff doesn’t really happen.” A few months on, he is now “at an
awkward juncture, because the book could absolutely flop, and I’m quite
sanguine about that. But if it is reasonably successful, this could be lifechanging.”
I don’t lie willy-nilly, but there are times in life when it’s morally sound
to do so
At 58, Searle finds himself at the beginning of a second career never
having published so much as a short story. The “all-consuming” day job
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