Best Nonfiction of Spring 2024 – BookBub (USA)

Top 10 Summer Reads – The Herald (Scotland)

‘The Eagle in the Mirror immerses readers in spycraft and molehunts and emerges as a captivating biography. Acknowledging the challenges in reevaluating the life and work of the besmirched Ellis, Fink does a more than admirable job, ultimately offering a book capable of opening minds.’

Booklist

‘A fine summary of a controversial case.’

Studies in Intelligence, Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA

'Fink has clearly done his homework... The Eagle in the Mirror is well-written and holds the reader's attention. It offers yet another look at the inner workings of MI6, and will take its rightful place on the bookshelf next to two other eminently readable and substantive books that cover some of the same ground: Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends, Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (2014) and Jimmy Burns' A Faithful Spy, The Life and Times of an MI6 and MI5 Officer (2023). This book will remind many veterans of a good CI study.'
The Cipher Brief 

‘This tense, absorbing book digs into the facts, seeking to determine if one of Britain’s greatest spies was also one of its greatest traitors.’
BookBub

‘The Eagle and the Mirror traces the life of spymaster Dick Ellis, an Australian-born Brit who became one of MI6’s most senior officers and helped found both the American OSS and Australian SIS. Jesse Fink meticulously pieces together hundreds of fragments and mentions of Ellis to construct a mosaic image of one of the 20th-century intelligence community’s most elusive and controversial figures.
‘Despite his towering accomplishments, Ellis stands accused of being not only a double agent for the Nazis but a triple agent for the Soviet Union. Fink spent years collecting and making sense of the entire body of evidence against Ellis – including a great deal of circumstantial evidence and unsubstantiated innuendo – and then methodically and clearheadedly analyzes each piece of it in an effort to determine once and for all if Ellis was or wasn’t one of the greatest traitors of our time.
‘This book is a fascinating and comprehensive look at one of the most private and undocumented figures of the 20th century. Fink is scrupulous in citing his sources, verifying each fact to the fullest possible extent and faithfully reporting conflicting information, which he leaves to the reader to weigh and decide what is closest to the truth.
‘A rollercoaster ride of “did he or didn’t he”, this ambitious biography reads more like a high-stakes spy novel as Fink winds through the web of secrets and treachery that finally ensnared Ellis and left both his career and reputation in ruins. By examining the man’s life and work in their totality, Fink definitively paints a picture of whether or not Ellis was a traitor or the victim of a smear campaign that was at best petty and at worst an attack from within the Kremlin itself.
‘This fascinating glimpse inside the world of real spies and the dangerous, convoluted, silent wars they wage on behalf of their countries will mesmerise you from start to finish. Tackling the life of an extremely private man who left little to no record of his life behind was a monumental task, but one Fink was fully up to in this brilliantly executed biography. This enthralling story finally brings clarity to one of the muddiest episodes in modern intelligence history. A must-read for anyone with an interest in World War II, the Cold War, or in understanding the nuance and complexity of the world spies inhabit.’
CINDY DEES, New York Times bestselling author, Second Shot and Double Tap

‘An important book on a figure who deserves proper historical attention.’

GILES SCOTT-SMITH, dean, Leiden University College, The Hague, and author, Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network

‘Great tale of espionage. The Eagle in the Mirror is a successful rehabilitation of a master spy who was unfairly accused of being a double agent, and even a triple agent, at the service of Germany and the Soviet Union... after a relentless investigation, Jesse Fink’s book does justice to Ellis.’
TALINE TER MINASSIAN, author, Most Secret Agent of Empire: Reginald Teague-Jones, Master Spy of the Great Game

‘A highly significant contribution to the literature of intelligence... Fink has performed some extremely important research.’
ANTONY PERCY, author, Misdefending the Realm: How MI5's Incompetence Enabled Communist Subversion of Britain's Institutions during the Nazi-Soviet Pact

 ‘Remarkable story... if this book tells us anything, it is the difficulty of knowing the truth of anything in the world of the security services.’

MICHAEL SEXTON, Australian Book Review

 ‘Jesse Fink plays detective and uncovers the fascinating real story about Ellis. Highly readable.’

JEFF POPPLE, Canberra Daily

 ‘Very interesting indeed... with some real digging for information, Fink does a very good job of showing the inadequacies of certain writers and that there is little or no real evidence that Ellis was an agent either for the Nazis or the Soviets.’
STEPHEN DORRIL, author, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations and MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service

‘This engrossing book makes a powerful case for Ellis to be seen as a hero.’ 

SIMON CATERSON, The Australian

‘Forensic and engrossing. The point of Fink’s work is to convincingly demolish various attacks on Ellis’s reputation, especially the self-serving accusations of treacherous dealings, first with the Nazis and then the Soviet Union, made by a phalanx of bitter, or simply gullible, “insiders”... it was all nonsense, if Fink is to be believed, and I think he can be...

‘Ellis, who died in 1975, was interrogated in 1966. Nothing of any substance was found. But the mere fact that he’d been questioned spawned an orgy of bestselling “exposes”, penned for profit by men who had never felt at home with truth or loyalty. Fink’s comprehensive exoneration, while as complex as the subject demands, is written by a fellow who clearly values both.’

PAT SHEIL, The Sydney Morning Herald

‘Jesse Fink’s passion to uncover the true story of Dick Ellis is an engaging journey through espionage in the post-World War I and World War II era. The highlight of the story for me was understanding just how much fear, deceit, and mystery were in the daily lives of British intelligence officers of the day.’

RONALD DRABKIN, author, Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor

Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the astonishing untold story of the Australian-born British soldier and intelligence officer accused by some espionage experts of being the traitor of the century:

CHARLES HOWARD ‘DICK’ ELLIS.

The longest serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). At one point in the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6 and controlled its activities, as one journalist put it, ‘for half the world’.

But in the 1980s crusading espionage journalist CHAPMAN PINCHER (in the hugely successful books Their Trade is Treachery and Too Secret Too Long) and retired MI5 intelligence officer PETER WRIGHT (in the worldwide bestseller Spycatcher) posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a ‘triple agent’ for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. 

In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a confession that he had supplied information to the Nazis before World War II. The scope of Ellis’s purported betrayal was considered even worse than notorious British traitor and double agent KIM PHILBY, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

However, Pincher’s and Wright’s accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. No confession has materialised. Meanwhile, other writers and former colleagues of Ellis, including historian ANTHONY CAVE BROWN and the man known around the world as ‘Intrepid’, WILLIAM STEPHENSON, publicly defended him to the hilt.

Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? By confessing did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a ‘super mole’? Internationally bestselling author JESSE FINK (Pure Narco, Bon: The Last Highway, The Youngs) attempts to find out the truth once and for all.

The Eagle in the Mirror is not just a long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis; it’s a gripping real-life international whodunit.

The Eagle in the Mirror is out now through Penguin Random House Australia, Black & White Publishing (UK) and Kensington Publishing (USA)