The Flowers of the Forest (1980) was the second of Joseph Hone’s quartet of ‘Peter Marlow’ spy novels, all now reissued as Faber Finds.
It is an idyllic setting: the sunlit forest sweeping down to the valley, the heather loud with bees....
"The deadline was close and I knew now what London had sent me out here to do: define, infiltrate and destroy. And I couldn't do it just by standing in the way of the program Moscow was running. I'd have to get inside and blow it up from...
London, 1992. Late one night, Edward Crane, 76, is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a 'resourceful career diplomat'. But Crane was much more than that – and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from...