Tom Wilde

This big-canvas international spy thriller marks the beginning of a brilliant new direction for Rory Clements. 1936. Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland. In Russia, Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror. Spain has erupted in civil war. In Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a Jewish scientist. Within weeks she is found dead, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers.

The eve of war: a secret so deadly, nothing and no-one is safe. June, 1939. England is partying like there is no tomorrow, gas masks at the ready. In Cambridge, the May Balls are played out with a frantic intensity - but the good times won't last. When one of Cavendish Laboratory's finest minds is murdered, Professor Tom Wilde is once more drawn into intrigue. In a conspiracy that stretches from Cambridge to Berlin and from Washington, DC to the west coast of Ireland, he faces deadly forces that threaten the fate of the world.

In a great English house, a young woman offers herself to one of the most powerful and influential figures in the land - but this is no ordinary seduction. She plans to ensure his death.... On holiday in France, Professor Tom Wilde discovers his brilliant student Marcus Marfield, who disappeared two years earlier to join the International Brigades in Spain, in the Le Vernet concentration camp in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Wilde secures his release just as German tanks roll into Poland. Meanwhile, a U-boat sinks the liner Athenia in the Atlantic with many casualties....