‘007 meets Tintin meets Sharpe' Damien Lewis

It began, as the very best catastrophes do, with a wedding.

When one Richard Hannay – battle-hardened, perpetually bewildered, and constitutionally incapable of minding his own business – stumbles out of the Congolese jungle and straight into a tribal marriage ceremony, he suspects his day is about to get considerably more complicated.

He is not wrong.

From the fever-bright shores of Lake Tanganyika to the gilded banqueting halls of imperial Berlin, Hannay finds himself entangled in a scheme of breathtaking audacity: to steal a priceless Michelangelo from under the Kaiser's nose – and replace it with a fake – before a masterpiece of Renaissance genius can be deployed as a weapon of war.

At his side: the unflappable Peter Pienaar; the lethally capable Mabika Nkosi; and the mercurial Sandy Arbuthnot, a man equally at home in a cassock, a tailcoat, or a great deal of trouble. Against them: an albino spymaster with a very long memory, a Hungarian count of impeccable manners and murderous intent, and a dessert trolley of fiendish ingenuity.

Outgunned, outwitted, and on one memorable occasion – out-paddled – Hannay is about to discover that the most dangerous game in Europe is not fought in the trenches.

It is fought over the pudding course.