RONAN FARROW

The year’s best spy thriller, Catch and Kill (out now), is stranger and more horrifying than fiction. Farrow, 31, expands on his reporting of the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein and others, while also telling his story of unravelling shocking conspiracies from Hollywood to D.C. He weaves a breathless narrative as compelling as it is disturbing.

Well before publication, reports surfaced of possible retaliation by many of those accused in the book. Did that scare you?

With every story I report, there is a playbook that gets used to try to get ahead of it, and that often includes legal threats against either whoever is publishing the story or me personally, or both. I wouldn’t say I’ve become immune to that. I’m human, and it’s stressful and scary.

The book reads like a spy thriller – bizarre code names, paper shredding, someone constantly following you. Did it feel like that in the moment? It did feel like I was in some kind of a ‘cloak-anddagger’ espionage plot as the reporting was playing out. [Laughs] It was only when I got the underlying documents and people started fessing up to the fact that this conspiracy was real that I realised if you’re wealthy and connected enough, you can literally construct a movie-style spy-thriller operation to crack down. In the final moments, there is a shocking new allegation of sexual assault against Matt Lauer (who has denied it). The alleged victim says NBC dismissed it.

It is explosive. She did go through a very traumatic situation that she alleges happened, and it’s an important story of why people should come forward in these situations, because it can change a corporate culture.

But does this mark the end of a chapter?

The press is still embattled. There are still Harvey Weinsteins in industry after industry. But the book brings full circle a lot of unanswered questions both I and the public had when that story emerged. I hope it feels satisfying.