But Trump and his outlandish cast of characters outdo even the wildest product of his imagination.

The writer, who has sold 250m books and had his work translated into 56 languages, recently launched an online masterclass for aspiring thriller writers. “I said, ‘If I wrote The Trump Code, nobody would believe it.’ Reality has surpassed fiction.” “I was at the Frankfurt book fair and somebody asked me if I’d thought about writing about Trump,” Brown recalled.