Taste for Treason: The Letter That Smashed a Nazi Spy Ring

When Dundee housewife Mary Curran became suspicious of flamboyant hairdresser Jessie Jordan’s frequent trips to Nazi Germany in 1937, she could not have known that she would become one of the world’s most successful amateur spycatchers. Thanks to Mary’s tip-off, MI5 and the FBI began major spy hunts on both sides of the Atlantic and security services in other countries rounded up yet more nests of Nazi spies. And so, again thanks to Mary, the Anglo-American special intelligence relationship was born.Featuring parallel Nazi espionage plots in Europe and North America that converged on a Scottish post office and set against a dramatic background of mounting international tension, this is a story shot through with all the staples of spy thrillers – seedy traitors, alluring femmes fatales, sinister Nazi thugs and glamorous movie stars. And all of it is true.
When Mary Curran became suspicious of hairdresser Jessie Jordan’s frequent trips to Nazi Germany in 1937, she could not have known that she would become one of the world’s most successful amateur spycatchers. This is her untold true story, the story of how a Nazi spy’s letter, intercepted in Scotland, broke spy rings across Europe and America.