A  former Liverpool Daily Post reporter and racing tipster has penned a new thriller which has been endorsed by the founder of Wikileaks.

After staring out as a drummer in a blues band, Roy David moved into journalism with a press agency in Southport, eventually moving to the Formby Times and working shifts on the Daily Mirror in Manchester, before joining the Post.

He spent 20 years with the paper, as crime reporter and later racing correspondent,  before leaving in the 1980s to focus on writing books about his beloved racing.

Lester Piggott: Downfall of a Legend reached number nine in the Sunday Times bestsellers charts, while his book about missing racehorse Shergar, inspired a BBC drama.

Now Roy has channeled his anger at the Iraq War into his debut novel, An Enemy Within – which centres on a CIA plot to boost the US president’s popularity.

The book’s themes all result from Roy’s own research into the consequences of the US-led Iraq invasion, and the actions of Tony Blair, President George W Bush, and  Donald Rumsfeld, – whose infamous comments on “known unknowns” are referenced throughout the book.

Said Roy:  “I was hugely angry about the lies behind our involvement.  It was really all about big oil.

“I realised the consequences of the invasion. The figures are disputed, but there were 600,000 to a million dead. Around 3m were displaced internally, 2.5m fled the country. And the place is still in chaos.”

The book has won the endorsement of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who described it as “a wonderful subversive thriller that gets the reader to confront hard truths about the American misadventure in Iraq.”

Roy, pictured left, said: “My view is that if WikiLeaks had been around at the time of the invasion or before, that some brave whistleblower might have come along and explained to the British public exactly what the situation was.

“Julian is a great follower and critic of US foreign policy.

“I thought I would see if he wanted to read it in the embassy – I know he’s busy. To my great surprise, he read it and liked it.”

Roy said the book was also a critique of the mainstream media’s coverage of the war.  “It  was extremely gung-ho – ‘let’s go out there and kick ass’,” he said.

An Enemy Within, is published by the Book Guild, priced £10.99 in paperback. It is also available as an e-book.