Montreal author launches Barbados-set spy thriller Nov. 29

Montreal author Russell Brooks will launch his new spy thriller, The Cadmus Imperative, with readings and a question-and-answer session at Union United Church on Sunday, Nov. 29, as the city’s Barbadian community prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of Barbados’s independence.

The event runs from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the church, at 3007 Delisle St., near Lionel-Groulx metro station, according to a press release published on our site that was issued by Brooks’s publicist, Janis Kirshner. It is to be hosted by Cynthia Waithe, who the release identifies as president of Barbados House Montreal. The release does not mention admission or ticket details.

The launch is timed to follow the Barbados Independence Day church service, the release said. Barbados became independent from Britain on Nov. 30, 1966, so this year’s anniversary is the 60th. The island removed Queen Elizabeth as head of state and became a republic on Nov. 30, 2021, which makes this year the fifth anniversary of that change.

Union United Church has long been a gathering place for Montreal’s Black communities. It is widely described as the city’s oldest Black congregation, founded in 1907, and has been on Delisle Street since 1917.

The Cadmus Imperative is the fourth book in Brooks’s Ridley Fox and Nita Parris series and, by the release’s count, his sixth thriller. The release describes it as a spy novel centred largely in Barbados. It says the story follows two CIA officers whose surveillance mission in Istanbul is sabotaged, before one of them learns of evidence linking her to a Nazi-era project in Barbados that the U.S. government is said to have sanctioned.

Brooks said in the release that he wanted to look at the human cost of intelligence work abroad. “Whenever we bring up spy thrillers, we often think about secret agents who must thwart the machinations of foreign powers from attacking the USA. We rarely think of the horrors these agencies inflicted on innocent foreigners in other countries under the pretext of national security,” he said.

The release said the book is partly inspired by the case of former CIA case officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was imprisoned under the Espionage Act after filing a discrimination complaint. It also said the novel is the first half of a two-book arc, with The Cadmus Cipher due in 2027.

Brooks, who lives in Montreal, is described in the release as a Canadian author of Barbadian descent. He is a former sprinter who, the release said, represented Canada at the 1999 World University Games in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, and competed for Team Quebec at the Jeux de la Francophonie in 1997 and 2001. He attended Indiana University on a track scholarship.

The author’s website, russellparkway.com, lists the book as coming Nov. 30, 2026, and offers readers the first two chapters. The release did not name a publisher or say where the book will be sold, and those details could not be confirmed independently.

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