: A Max Calder Spy-Fi Mystery (The Bureau Archives Trilogy)
- by Alexander Bentley
THE MIRROR WAS MEANT TO WIN THE WAR.
NOW IT THREATENS TO UNMAKE EVERYTHING.
New York, Vienna, Prague, Montevideo 1947. The war sputtered to an uneasy close, but in the alleys and underground bunkers of a city still cloaked in smoke, another kind of conflict is just beginning—one that plays out in shadows, half-truths, and false identities. The Cold War has begun.
Max Calder, former intelligence operative turned washed-up fixer, wants out. Out of the Bureau, out of the lies, out of the war that keeps rewinding like a scratched gramophone. But when a ghost from his past—the elusive agent known only as Artemis—resurfaces with a whispered warning and a briefcase full of half-truths, Calder is pulled back in.
The Bureau is chasing a secret called The Mirror—a project so classified that even its architects have vanished or been silenced. It’s said to control time, memory, even identity itself. Calder’s ordered to destroy it. But as he tracks the Mirror’s echoes across smoke-filled jazz clubs, half-empty safehouses, and wartime graveyards, the lines between hunter and hunted begin to blur.
Artemis may be an ally. Or she may be a weapon.
The Bureau may be protecting the world. Or rewriting it.
And Calder? He may not even be who he thinks he is.
As bodies pile up and truths unravel, Calder must navigate a world where nothing stays still—where every room slides just a few inches sideways when you’re not looking. In the end, he’ll face one impossible choice:
Burn the truth… or become it.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Bentley is a serial entrepreneur living in California, with experience founding and leading technology companies in both the UK and the USA. He has held senior roles, including CEO, in both public and private enterprises. Over the years, he has had many technology and security-related interactions with the government, the UK Ministry of Defence, the US Department of Defense, and many aerospace and defense companies. His own technology companies have included those that address the secure communications and networking markets. Additionally, with a physics background, he is very familiar with the principles of quantum mechanics and quantum computing.
Writing under the name Alexander Bentley, he is married to Lucinda and has two grown children, Alexander (Lex) and Virginia (Ginny).
Furniture Sliders is Alexander’s first Spy-Fi novel, which entangles the world of espionage with science fiction, bringing a new approach to post-World War II noir writing. As part of the Bureau Archives Trilogy it will be followed by Angus Sliders and Cuban Sliders.