Major Harry Maxim is ex-SAS and he now works as a special member of number 10's backroom staff, advising the PM on matters of defence and security. This time he is going to be drawn into the shadowy - and deadly - world of East-West intrigue

A deserting English corporal, a cabinet convulsion in East Germany, a double murder in a small West German town, and a widowed piano teacher in Yorkshire: they're all somehow related by a dark secret from the past, and it's down to Harry Maxim to uncover before it's too late.

First published in 1982, The Conduct of Major Maxim is...

Based in Lapland, Bill Cary makes a precarious living by flying aerial surveys in the search for nickel deposits. Towards the end of the season, a wealthy American hunter hires him to fly into a prohibited part of Finland near the Soviet border in order to hunt bear. His refusal to charter a flight in search of lost Tsarist treasure, ends up embroiling him with violent thugs and the Finnish secret service. Matters only get worse when the wealthy American's hunter's beautiful sister turns up to search for her brother, and his fellow bush pilots start getting killed off in a series of...

'Mr Kemp - I believe you smuggle art? I have a little proposition...'

It seemed like money for old rope. All Kemp had to do was arrange the smooth passage of a Cezanne across the border to Switzerland, so it could then be transported to its new owners in Nicaragua. And anything was preferable to London in January.

After the train-ride, he awakes in a Zurich park with a bump the size of a burial mound on his head, minus the priceless work he'd been carrying. The very next day he runs into Harry Burroughs at the airport. Kemp suspects that it wasn't just coincidence. Burroughs is...

Martin Fenwick was a rich, respected man; a man everybody loved--until the day he stumbled onto a deadly secret that sent him on a rendezvous with a bullet that silenced him forever.

Lois Fenwick, the unfortunate widow, was oddly without sorrow over her husband's death, for she was still young, beautiful, and very much alive.

David Fenwick, the surviving son, was about to become a man. He wanted his father's killer, and would risk his own life to find him.

James Card, bodyguard, sought only revenge, for his former employer. Martin Fenwick had died in his arms, leaving...

With the shadow of the First World War looming ever closer, Britain is quietly relieved when Turkish bandits hold to ransom engineers working on a railway that threatened its oil interests in the Persian Gulf. Feigning help, the Foreign Office sends the notorious Lady Kelso, once lover of the bandit's chief, with members of the fledgling Secret Service Bureau to serve as 'diplomatic protection'.

Ambush, betrayal, murder and bombardment all ensue as there are others - German, Turkish and French - all honourably putting their own countries interests first.

First published in...

It wasn't just a tank. It was the prototype, next generation, Main Battle Tank, with a radically new gun. And now it was missing, presumed to be about to fall into hostile hands.

Secretly loaned to the Jordanian army for desert evaluation tests, it had vanished in the confusion of a revolt by an entire armoured brigade.

From the bloody evidence of a London hotel siege it is clear that the events are deliberately connected. The MBT90 must be found, and if necessary, destroyed, in order to preserve its secrets.

SAS-trained Major Harry Maxim is sent in. But what starts as a...