Author with Bodmin roots pens spy trilogy finale set at Jamaica Inn

A former RAF radar engineer who spent part of his childhood in Bodmin has just sent his fictional soldier back into the field, chasing an old enemy across three continents, and he’s about to bring the story home to Cornwall.

From Pakistan to Norway: what happens in Rectifying Accounts

Berkeley Fenne’s second novel, Rectifying Accounts, has just been released as the middle instalment of his Rectifier trilogy, now available. It follows ex-SAS Captain Stuart Reece as he tracks down his nemesis, ex-Soviet Army Major Leonid Levesky, in a story that moves between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Europe.

Reece narrowly escapes several attempts on his life while trying to disrupt a drug operation spanning continents. Captured by Levesky and offered a place in his empire, he breaks free and follows the drug trail from Asia to the UK, with the plot culminating in Norway as the country’s criminal underworld gathers to carve up the proceeds.

It picks up from The Rectifier, the first book, in which Reece foiled an attempted coup by former military leaders and extremists financed by the UK drug trade.

A family history that reaches back to Passchendaele

Berkeley was born in North London, but his Cornish roots go back further than his own lifetime. His family moved to Bodmin when he was eight, to care for his grandmother, and he now spends around half the year in the county.

“My Cornish connection stems from my paternal grandmother and family,” he said. “I am very familiar with the North Cornish coast and Bodmin Moor, having enjoyed many an excursion when young and now when I am in my Lodge.”

The family’s ties to Cornwall stretch back more than a century. Berkeley’s grandfather served in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and was killed in action at Passchendaele in 1917.

From RAF radar engineer to novelist

Writing wasn’t the first career. After leaving school, Berkeley joined the RAF at 16 and served for 12 years as an Air Radar Engineer during the Cold War, a posting that took him to Singapore, Canada, Norway, Gibraltar and Yemen. He later moved into engineering, working up through senior roles before setting up his own consultancy.

“During my time running large companies, part of my duties was to generate reports, business plans and the like,” he explained. “This helped me believe that I could and should write a novel. Once I had completed my reference book, the ‘bug’ of writing took hold.”

Alongside the Rectifier series, he has also written a true story following two families through the years before the First World War, one based in London and one in Cornwall, tracing how each managed to live through that period, including the war itself and the sacrifices it demanded.

The trilogy’s Cornish finale

The third and final book, Rectifying Wrongs, is due out in December, and this time the story starts on home ground. It opens along the North Cornish coast, with the trilogy’s central character on a sabbatical along the South West Coast Path following the events of book two, before the action moves onto Bodmin Moor and into the Jamaica Inn itself.

Berkeley currently splits his time between the county and Spain, and is based at his lodge in St Mabyn for now. Whether Reece finds anything like peace on the Coast Path is, of course, another matter entirely.