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Front cover of Archangel: Once Upon a Time in Dreamland by Bruce Meek — an A-12 spy plane over a night desert with an Area 51 restricted-area sign

A Cold War Spy Thriller

Archangel

Once Upon a Time in Dreamland

Archangel: Once Upon a Time in Dreamland is a Cold War spy thriller of classified aircraft, hidden enemies, and the secrets buried beneath America's most mysterious desert base.

01 The Story

Lake Tahoe, 1960.

As the world gathers at Squaw Valley for the Winter Olympics, FBI Special Agent Ted Britton is assigned to keep watch over a celebration of sport, diplomacy, and uneasy Cold War peace. But when an East German coach is seen meeting with a suspicious American military insider, Britton uncovers a trail leading far beyond the Olympic village.

In the Nevada desert, a revolutionary new CIA spy plane is being tested at a place known only as Dreamland. Faster, higher, and more advanced than anything before it, the A-12 Archangel could change the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Now the KGB wants its secrets.

With Soviet agents, mob money, and a traitor inside America's defense world closing in, Britton must navigate a deadly maze of deception stretching from Lake Tahoe to Area 51. And when the mission turns personal, the cost of failure becomes more than national security.

It becomes everything.

02 Behind the book

A real war, a real price

The novel is fiction, built on the news stories, political figures and weapons programmes of the period. It tries to show how spies and their tradecraft actually worked, and how American counterintelligence fought to protect the country's secrets.

“That war was real… and the price people, such as my father, paid for it was real too.”

Read the author's note

Trailer

Archangel — Once Upon a Time in Dreamland