When Ruby Parker, Head of MI7's Red Department, is hospitalised by a burglar, all is not as it seems. Her removal coincides with a series of catastrophes for British spies in hostile territories abroad, and some very shifty behaviour by the new Acting Head of Red Department, Patrick Atherton. Atherton dislikes Red's established hierarchy, which includes all its officers without exception, and possibly John Mordred in particular.
The idea that there's something fishy going on, and that all this is linked, seems intuitively obvious, and probably worth investigating.
But then things take a turn for the strange. Atherton has an apparent breakdown; he gets up from his desk, leaves Thames House and apparently goes off radar. Important men and women across London start dying in violent circumstances. It simultaneously transpires that the mysterious Black Department is taking a close interest in all this. And not quite from its usual distance.
Suddenly, John Mordred himself becomes the focus of intensely hostile scrutiny. And when he, too, goes off radar, it's because he no longer has a choice. At least, not if he wants to live.
For a while, nothing seems to make sense.
Then, shockingly, it does.
The idea that there's something fishy going on, and that all this is linked, seems intuitively obvious, and probably worth investigating.
But then things take a turn for the strange. Atherton has an apparent breakdown; he gets up from his desk, leaves Thames House and apparently goes off radar. Important men and women across London start dying in violent circumstances. It simultaneously transpires that the mysterious Black Department is taking a close interest in all this. And not quite from its usual distance.
Suddenly, John Mordred himself becomes the focus of intensely hostile scrutiny. And when he, too, goes off radar, it's because he no longer has a choice. At least, not if he wants to live.
For a while, nothing seems to make sense.
Then, shockingly, it does.
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"Readers will find John Mordred to be one of the most appealing characters in fiction today." - Publisher's Daily.
"John Mordred comes alive on the page and is a character readers will not soon forget." - The Booklife Review.
The last instalment in the Tales of MI7 series!
Ruby's Parker's retirement hangs like a dark cloud over MI7. She herself has only a vague idea what the future might hold - both personally, and in terms of national security. But for many of her team, she's irreplaceable. To cap it all, there's a massive organisational overhaul on the cards at Thames House. Everyone's nervous, and with good reason.
In the middle of all this uncertainty, there's an assassin at large. He's already murdered a British returnee from Syria who claimed to have 'information' about the latest Russian plot to destabilise Western Europe. He may also be pursuing her sole British confidante. And he's definitely seeking an American secret servicewoman named Daisy Hallenbeck. There are reasons to think Daisy knows precisely what's going on but, disturbingly, she seems to have fallen off the map. Not even the US embassy knows where she is.
John Mordred is assigned to investigate. He finds himself up against the clock in a completely unconventional way. Among his top priorities is that Ruby Parker doesn't leave MI7 with the words 'unsolved case' against her name.