A devil’s choice faces the President of the USA and other statesmen all over the world: whichever option they choose, men are going to die. But Adam Munro is unmoved. He knows that politicians have no objection to loss of life, so long as they are not seen publicly to have had anything to do with it.

          As the gripping story gathers momentum, the reader is transported from Moscow to London, from Rotterdam to Washington, from a country house in Ireland to the world’s biggest oil tanker which threatens to pollute the whole of the North Sea. The climax is the most exciting that even this master story-teller has contrived, and the last-minute surprises in the concluding chapters take the breath away.