Sir Robert Hellier, millionaire film tycoon, was too busy making money to realize that his only daughter had become a drug addict until he learned she had died from an overdose of heroin. Now Sir Robert wanted action; he wanted blood. Not the blood of the sleazy drug-pushers who had supplied his daughter, but the blood of the big-time international suppliers of the market in Europe and the States. And Sir Robert was prepared to stake a large part of his personal fortune to cut heroin off at source.

Enlisting the help of Dr Nicholas Warren, London drug specialist who knew as much about the problem as any police force, Sir Robert prevailed upon him to select a seemingly ill-assorted group of men and mount an expedition to the Middle East in pursuit of two slender clues.

But the clues lead to two separate lines of to split in two. While one group, posing as an advance film unit, follows the perilous trail to the opium farm in the secret valley where the deadly poppy is grown, the other, back in Beirut, infiltrates by a means as ingenious as anything since the Trojan Horse the murderous organization which is planning to ‘export’ a hundred million dollars’ worth of heroin. Their two-pronged attack is complicated by an explosive political situation involving gun-running into Kurdistan, and by the need to rescue the infiltrators from a gang whose ruthlessness and high-powered organization are equalled only by the stakes for which they play.

Desmond Bagley has produced as tense an adventure story as any he has written, set against the usual authentic and well-researched background which gives his novels their unique and ever-growing appeal.

The old brass tray which had lain around the Devon farmhouse of the Wheales for centuries was considered of no account — until it was exhibited in a local museum and found to be of pure gold and of great archeological value. A photograph in the local paper started a rush of bidders from America. In the midst of the bidding came sudden, violent death.

The tray was one of a pair, which together held the key to the Vivero Letter, written four hundred years before by a Spanish conquistador held captive in Yucatán by the fearsome Mayas. Ownership of the letter, which promises unimaginable riches to whoever can discover the secret of the twin trays, is disputed by two rival archaeologists. Spurred by the need to avenge a senseless murder, young Jeremy Wheale decides to take a hand.

He persuades the archaeologists to join forces in a search for the lost Mayan city which Manuel de Vivero so glowingly described. Also seeking it, for the sake of the treasure it is alleged to contain, is a powerful underworld character who finds ready allies in the cut-throat convict labour force which roams the jungle armed with guns and machetes. In the ensuing clash amid the perils of the dense Mexican rain-forest in which a lost civilization lies hidden, Desmond Bagley employs all his outstanding narrative skill and authentic background knowledge to create a new high level in the thrilling adventure stories which have made him the best-seller he is.

On a lush Caribbean island, a group of four men and two women find themselves caught between a hurricane and a revolution.

Meteorologist David Wyatt knew the hurricane would hit. The West Indian natives were never wrong when they began tying down their roofs, regardless of what his tracking instruments showed.

What Wyatt couldn’t forsee war the tumultuous conjunction of force — both natural and man-made — the was about to make Mabel his personal hurricane, one that would sweep his either to death or glory. Wyatt’s hurricane!

It comes just as the island’s rebel leader, unaware of its approach, is massing his forces in the mountains for an attack on the city below. As the wind and the war near each other, Wyatt becomes the one person who can save the island from destruction, the inhabitants from death.

To do it, he must beat a two-fold onslaught in a near-fatal race against time and terror — a tale of imaginative adventure and suspense.