Paul Eddy, bestselling author of the thriller series starring FBI undercover cop Grace Flint, breaks cover…

Grace Flint is not entirely a figment of my imagination. In fact, she is in many ways a composite of two real-life extraordinary cops.

Wendy Lovato was a legendary DEA undercover agent who I first met in Florida in the mid-1980s after she had carried out two of her more outrageous stings. I knew four things about her: that by posing as a prostitute in a hick town in Nevada she had infiltrated, and eventually taken down, a huge network of marijuana smugglers; that in a year-long covert operation in Florida and the Caribbean she had “turned” a British banker operating out of the Cayman Islands from a prolific money-launderer into her most significant CI (Confidential Informant) – and, as a result, more than one hundred people were arrested; that on the firing range she almost always scored a perfect 10; that she was an expert horsewoman who took part in – and usually won – endurance races across vast tracts of desert. I expected to meet Superwoman. Wendy turned out to be a 5ft-nothing blond with a high-pitched voice who looked like your sister, or the girl next door – the last person you would believe to be an undercover cop. Which may explain why she was so successful.

Suzanne Williams is now a high-flying Metropolitan Police Officer who has headed the Royal Protection and the Anti-Kidnap squads. But when I first met her she was a lowly Detective Constable at Scotland Yard, always the first to volunteer for dangerous undercover assignments – such as offering herself as rape-bait. “Why do you do it?” was the question I often asked and that she was never able to answer with much more than a shrug.

Trying to understand what makes women like Wendy and Suzanne tick was the reason I created Flint – but I’m not sure that I’ve yet found the answer.

FLINT’S CODE is published in June 06
FLINT and FLINT’S LAW are reissued with new jackets in the same month.

 
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