KEY POINTS:
LONDON - He may have made his fortune crafting violent page-turners based on his experience as an SAS trooper marooned behind enemy lines in the 1991 Gulf War.
However, it seems that the novelist Chris Ryan has found a more feminine side after completing his first - and
last - romantic novel.
Writing under the pen name Molly Jackson, Ryan will publish The Fisherman's Daughter next year. More Mills & Boon than murder and mayhem, the book, a romantic quest about one man's search for his true identity, is set in a remote Scottish village. It has gleaned positive reviews in Australia where it has already been published and it could be an unlikely hit for the author in his native country when it goes on sale in Britain in March next year.
Switching genres appears to have proved anything but a positive experience for Ryan.
"I tend to stick to a subject that I'm comfortable with, but I wanted to see if I could do a classic family saga," he said, while warning his mainly male fan-base that they can expect him to be reverting to type for his next book.
"I won't be doing it again. If it taught me something, it was not to go out of your comfort zone."
Ryan, 47, made his name during the Bravo Two Zero operation with a fellow SAS man-turned-writer, Andy McNab.
They formed part of a contingent of soldiers sent behind Iraqi lines to destroy mobile Scud launchers whose missiles were wreaking devastation on Allied troops at the start of the first Gulf War. But the eight-man patrol found its mission compromised. Three were killed and four, including McNab, were captured. Ryan was the only one to escape, walking nearly 320km to the safety of Syria, a feat for which he won the Military Medal. He recounted his experiences in his first book, The One That Got Away.
GENRE BENDERS
Examples of men writing under a woman's name remain few. Better known is for women to claim to be men. Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, was forced to adopt a male nom de plume in order to be taken seriously by publishers and the reading public. However, her eventual unmasking and unconventional private life did little to diminish the popularity of her masterpieces Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss.
- INDEPENDENT