David Holman

David Holman writes historical thrillers that place fictional investigations inside contested episodes of aviation and Cold War history. Wings of Death begins his Alex Swan Mysteries and draws on the cancellation of the BAC TSR-2 strike-aircraft program in the 1960s. Holman developed the novel after researching the aircraft for an aviation article and finding that the political controversy could support an espionage plot. His recurring investigators, Ministry of Defence troubleshooters Alex Swan and Arthur Gable, connect later books to other events while retaining the structure of a spy series. Lume Books has presented the first three Alex Swan novels as a collected sequence, and bibliographic listings identify Wings of Death as book one. Holman cites John le Carré, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth, and Ian Fleming among the writers who shaped his interest in the form. The novel’s title belongs to a project that combines technical aviation detail, government secrecy, and invented clandestine action, using a real procurement dispute as the historical frame for Swan’s first case.