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Description:

British police detective Tom Carver is sent to investigate what he believes to be a run-of-the-mill murder of a nameless vagrant. As he works the case, however, he learns that the murdered man was a banker who was moonlighting as a blackmailer with ties to Maximilian Snider, the head of a nefarious crime organization. The murder victim had stolen a top-secret disc for Snider with information about the government’s attempts to manufacture a battlefield nerve gas agent.

When he refuses to drop the murder case investigation, Carver is framed by members of his own force, who are in league with Snider. Soon he is on the run from the police, Security Services and Snider's hit men, and even his estranged family is threatened. Can Carver get Snider before he releases the nerve agent across London?

Excerpt:

Breath steaming, Tom Carver tugged a latex glove over his frozen right hand, crouched, lifted back the plastic sheet and studied the corpse. Blood matted the middle-aged vagrant's thinning black hair. The well-tailored dark brown pinstriped suit, shabby and stained with vomit and alcohol, was not the usual attire of a tramp. A spent nine-millimeter shell was wedged between his mauve lips like a cigarette butt. Most professionals marked their kills, and would display the heads on their walls like big-game trophies given the chance.

With a decisive but gentle touch, he turned the shattered skull. "An execution. Close up. Single bullet through the brain entering at the back of the neck." He peered up at his Detective Sergeant. "Benny, who the hell would sanction a contract on a wino? And why the hell do it on a freezing January morning when I ought to be home snuggled in with the wife."

Benny shoved his hands into his duffel coat pockets and stomped his feet. "You were divorced two years ago, Tom."

Carver grinned and snapped off the glove. "Chummy must've been an important bum to warrant a professional."

He found a peculiar fusion of excitement and comfort whenever he hovered in the quiet roar that followed death, especially violent death. He forgot his surroundings for a moment, even the cold and the shadows of his colleagues melted into the incessant hum of the blinding halogen lamp. The lamp, which hung from an aluminum support pole, had burned away the hoarfrost from the tented rectangle of grass.

He glanced at the ashen face of the young uniformed constable positioned by the flap, and then at his murder-squad colleague. "I'd bet my pension no one heard or saw anything? Who found him?"

"I did, sir," the uniformed officer said.

Grief; he was just a kid. They were churning out babies now and sticking them in uniforms. "How long you been on the force?"

"Just out of Training College, sir."

"I wish I was." Carver smiled at him. "Don't worry, son, you actually get used to this. Any identification?"

Customer Reviews:

Action packed story that never dissapoints, complemented by a strong cast. Sort of mix of Jack Higgins and John Ludlum. Impressed. rnrnJohn Ward