Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Espionage

Kidnapping is one of the cruellest crimes - lives are put at risk for cold, hard cash. But when Somali pirates seize the crew of a yacht off the coast of Africa, they bite off more than they can chew. One of the hostages has friends in high places, and Spider Shepherd is put on the case. He goes deep undercover in an audacious plan to bring an end to the pirate gang's reign of terror. But as Shepherd closes in on his quarry, he realises that there's much more at stake than the lives of the hostages.

Murderous jihadists have been crossing the English Channel, passing themselves off as asylum seekers. MI5 have been keeping them under surveillance, but what starts as a simple terrorist takedown goes badly wrong, and dozens of innocent civilians are killed in the heart of London. And the screw is tightened when a bomb takes out senior members of the Secret Intelligence Service.

The pope is dead. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican to select his replacement, but one has fled for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the fourth century and Constantine the Great. Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone is in Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that could rewrite history. But someone else is after the same letters, and when Malone obtains and then loses them, he's plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the legendary Knights of Malta.

Meet Louis Warlock. Man about town, denizen of Soho's nightclubs and cabaret bars - and the most skilled magician of his time. As a boy, Ludvik Weinschenk fled Nazi Germany to England with a pack of playing cards and three tricks to his name. Twelve years later, in 1950s London, having risen through the ranks of concert parties, night clubs and variety theatres, Ludvik - or Louis Warlock as he is now known - is the most famous magician in Britain. But after his talent for deception attracts the attention of the British secret service, Louis is thrown into the perilous world of espionage.

Seventeen is a hitman, the best in the world, so-called because there were 16 before him, stretching back through the decades. Every government organisation in the world wants his services and every other high-level hitman has placed a target on his back. Because to be the best, you have to beat the best. When Seventeen is ordered to find and kill his predecessor, the hit goes wrong and hunter turns to hunted. An ultraviolent duel develops between two assassins at the height of their powers, but when they fight themselves to a standstill, the real target of the hit emerges.

EVERYONE IS GRIPPED BY STEPHEN RONSON!

May 1940. With Nazi forces sweeping across France, invasion seems imminent. The English Channel has never felt so narrow. In rural Sussex, war veteran John Cook has been tasked with preparing the resistance effort, should the worst happen. But even as the foreign threat looms, it's rumours of a missing child that are troubling Cook. A 12-year-old girl was evacuated from London and never seen again, and she's just the tip of the iceberg - countless evacuees haven't made it to their host families. As Cook investigates, he uncovers a dark conspiracy that reaches to the highest ranks of society.

Following a suicide bombing in central London, series SAS hero Danny Black is recruited to be part of an assassination squad, directed by a joint MI5/MI6/CIA committee and tasked with hunting down and killing the terrorist cells believed to be planning further atrocities.

SAS trooper Matt 'Lastman' Standing is a lethal killing machine with experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Plus he's worked with French in the past. It's not a mission he wants, but Standing made a bad choice in his past, and it has come back to haunt him. Now he's hunting French in the lawless Wild West forests of Humboldt County, where the US produces most of its legal - and illegal - cannabis. But French isn't the only predator in the wilderness - there are Mexican cartels, Russian Mafia and Hungarian gangsters - and Standing has to overcome them all to get to his target.

Mickey and Mark Moore are ordinary decent criminals - hard men who live by their own code and leaders of a gang that has made millions at the point of a gun. But when Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is sent to infiltrate the tightly knit team of bank robbers, he discovers that he has more in common with them then he first thought. And that perhaps being a career criminal isn't the worst thing in the world.

The target—The Prime Minister. The assassins—hard-bitten jihadists with nothing to lose. The only man who can stop them? Dan 'Spider' Shepherd. But Shepherd's reputation is also on the line—he helped get one of the jihadists into the UK during the final days of the War in Afghanistan. Now he has to track down the man whose life he once saved. But the assassins aren't lone-wolf killers—someone much more devious is pulling their strings.

Islamic State is here, all around us. There is no defence. Only attack. On the Syria/Iraq border, a British hostage is beheaded by IS terrorists. When the executioner breaks down, he is led into a nearby tent, where a masked figure is waiting for him. This mysterious person is treated with a mixture of respect and terror. They call him the Caliph.

Former Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, has been asked to assist the Swiss guard with determining whether Cardinal Jason Richter has engaged in bribery and theft. It's a favor for Stephanie Nelle, once his boss at the Magellan Billet, who is doing a favor for the Vatican. But nothing is as it seems. Three hundred thousand euros are found, a Swiss Guardsman is murdered, and a killer sets his sights on both Cotton and the cardinal.

When Ruth Miller returns a dropped scarf to Elena Shilkov, she is whisked from a dreary shared house to a world of unimagined luxury. The super-rich Russian wants a new personal assistant and won't take no for an answer. Ruth gets accommodation, a credit card and a complete wardrobe makeover. And she's good at the job; distributing gifts, attending galas, dealing with the high-society movers and shakers fighting for Elena's attention. Then the sinister truth begins to reveal itself, that nothing is quite what it seems in Elena's dangerous, deceptive world.

The terrorist Guy Fowle has escaped from prison. Jude Lyon of MI-6 has been saved from a Syrian ambush by his lover - and enemy? - Julia Ermolaeva. A mysterious Russian has been murdered in London and his thumb cut off. The chancellor of the Exchequer has made an unfortunate social connection at a party, which he hopes he can keep secret. And suddenly, the world is literally going up in flames. Jude needs to start putting together the pieces of this jigsaw and quickly, because someone is putting into play a terrifying Russian plan to disable and destroy the UK.

London 1929. Very much not a land fit for heroes. Frenchie knows his occasional work for MI5 serves only the ruling classes. But he needs to feed his children. Scruples died in the trenches. When Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's first Labour prime minister, is blackmailed by a former lover, Frenchie must go to Paris to buy her silence. It is clear there are many people who would see MacDonald fall—the Conservatives, their friends in the press, even some of his own colleagues. But his own secret service? When Frenchie hears the other side of the story, everything changes.

Jude Lyon of MI6 has narrowly foiled the traitor Fowle's plot to level London, but the public are demanding answers. Answers the government doesn't have. As the country reels, a new populist political figure carves a stratospheric trajectory—but is he all he seems? In Moscow the President is furious. The world now knows the destructive power of the programme his people had been developing, and as the Russians scramble to understand how it got into Fowle's hands, they start to worry that perhaps it could be used against them.