Sidney Reilly was the most audacious, courageous, and successful spy in history. His adventures first came to light during the Russian Revolution in 1917 when he was tasked by Britain’s Secret Service with overthrowing the Bolsheviks after they had formed a new government. He had already succeeded in stealing the plans of the Kaiser’s new and modern fleet of battleships from Krupp, to help Britain win World War I, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1919.

In 1953, novelist Ian Fleming used Reilly’s secret Admiralty Intelligence file to write his novels about a fictional secret agent he called James Bond 007. But Reilly’s true exploits were even more thrilling and fantastic than those of the fictional James Bond. Reilly was Britain’s best spy—but was he also a Soviet double-agent?

Author John Harte retells Reilly’s story as it really was, in fast-moving prose with an eye for telling detail—and provides a twist: He tells us what really happened to Reilly after he vanished in Soviet Russia in 1925 and was assumed to have been murdered by Stalin’s secret police. Apparently not!

John Harte was born in London, England after World War 1, when he absorbed the controversies and lessons of that war which historians puzzled over for years afterwards. He then watched each milestone leading to World War 2, in which he served, and lived in England throughout. In postwar years he became an investigative journalist in England and South Africa, where he visited the battle zones of the Boer War. He was a director of companies in the UK, South Africa, and Canada. This is Harte’s second book about Sir Winston Churchill, after How Churchill Saved Civilization (Skyhorse, 2017). He lives and writes books on modern history in Ottawa, Canada. Visit his website at johnhartebooks.com.

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"DANCING WITH DEATH by John Harte is a true espionage mystery that reads like a detective story. It is about the real-life hero of Britain's Secret Service, code-named Sidney Reilly. The story takes readers on a thrilling ride across Germany, Russia, Mongolia and Japan, where he is sent by his controller in London. The author finally answers the question which had stumped previous biographers as to what happened to Reilly after he vanished in Soviet Russia in 1925. But one question still remains - was he a British hero or a foreign traitor: a double-spy working for the KGB? This true story could otherwise have been another spy thriller about the fearless James Bond. And, in fact, Ian Fleming, the novelist who invented the fictional 007, based his Bond character on Reilly's extraordinary exploits." ARIANNA DAGNINO, author of: The Afrikaner