Bob Richards celebrated the launch of his new book at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute last night, giving attendees a taste of the intrigue within its pages.

About 100 people attended the book launch event, which featured readings from Triangle of Blood, the second part of a planned trilogy.

Mr Richards told the crowd the novel was set in the midst of the Cold War, weaving Bermuda’s real role in detecting Russian submarines with a fictional story of espionage and murder.

“These are historical fictions,” Mr Richards said. “What we have done is taken the skeleton of the facts and we wrapped around that skeleton fictional characters and fictional stories just to make it interesting.

“It finally came to me that nobody was going to buy a book on ferry boats, even though I would buy it.”

Mr Richards said that a number of Bermudians played roles in the Sofar project and he wanted to highlight how the island and its people had impacted world events.

“We all know that Bermuda is a tiny but amazing place and we have been involved in geopolitical events over the course of history like no other small island I know,” he said.

“We were involved with the first English colony in America. We played a part in the US Civil War, the War of 1812, the Boer War and other things.”

The former minister of finance said that while the first book, Triangle of Treason, focused on the Second World War and the latest was based around the Cold War, the final in the trilogy would be set in the midst of the space race and Bermuda’s role in it.

“When I started to research this material, I was surprised to find out how much ordinary Bermudians were involved in these things,” he said. “It was quite something.”

The book cover states: “The intricate conflict of spy versus counter spy, stretching from California to London and Moscow, pivots around a Bermuda emerging from its own era of segregation.

“The story ultimately intersects with the most terrifying chapter of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Triangle of Blood is available now at local retailers, while digital copies can be purchased online through Amazon.