It is London in the late 1930s, & into a coterie of rather grand early-middle-aged people the sixteen-year-old orphan Portia is plunged beyond her depth. Disconcertingly vulnerable, Portia is manifestly trying to understand what is going on around her & looking for something that is not there. Evident victim, she is also an inadvertent victimiser
- her impossible lovingness & austere trust being too much for her admirer Eddie, who is himself defensive & uncomfortable in this society which has managed to bring them together. In the midst of the rising tension is set perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's most brilliant piece of social comedy, when, at a seaside villa full of rollicking young people, Portia experiences at least temporary relief from the misery Eddie seems determined to bring her.
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Damian Drake rescues his dog from a well & gets his name into the newspapers. He then receives a letter from a girl he has never met which sparks off a long correspondence between the two. As more & more letters are exchanged a sinister thread creeps in & the story gathers speed for a final amazing drama. ...

In 1950s Britain, a group of decadent aristocrats operated their own 'secret season', an alternative to the tedious official round of balls & court presentations. Instead of being groomed for marriage, pretty young 'debutantes' are trained, tormented & finally auctioned off in a bizarre parody of the real debutantes' presentation at court. Angela is inducted into this secret world. Though the punishments she endures turn her on, she becomes increasingly alarmed as she realises she will end up as the property of a wicked aristocrat. Soon she is consumed by the question that torments many of the 'secret season' debutantes: which of these cruel men & women will acquire her? ...

As the dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility, The Decay of the Angel brings together the dominant themes of the three previous novels: the meaning & decay of Japan's courtly tradition & samurai ideal; the essence & value of Buddhist philosophy & aesthetics; &, underlying all, Mishima's apocalyptic vision of the modern era, which saw the dissolution of the moral & cultural forces that throughout the ages nourished a people & a world. The time is the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged & wealthy man, discovers & adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises & educates the boy, yet watches him, waiting. ...

As the dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility, The Decay of the Angel brings together the dominant themes of the three previous novels: the meaning & decay of Japan's courtly tradition & samurai ideal; the essence & value of Buddhist philosophy & aesthetics; &, underlying all, Mishima's apocalyptic vision of the modern era, which saw the dissolution of the moral & cultural forces that throughout the ages nourished a people & a world. The time is the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged & wealthy man, discovers & adopts a sixteen-year-old orphan, Toru, as his heir, identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels, each of whom died at the age of twenty. Honda raises & educates the boy, yet watches him, waiting. ...

As a professional 'cleaner', Jonathan Quinn disposes of bodies & ties up loose ends. Doesn't get his hands dirty, no wet work. But when he discovers he's been hired to vanish all traces of Steven Markoff, one of his best friends who just happened to work for the CIA, his job suddenly hits too close to home. This time, it's personal.

Quinn is determined to get justice for Markoff. Plus, now, Markoff's girlfriend Jenny, who had been an assistant to an ambitious Congressman, has also disappeared. Racing from the corridors of power in Washington to the bustling streets of Singapore

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As a professional 'cleaner', Jonathan Quinn disposes of bodies & ties up loose ends. Doesn't get his hands dirty, no wet work. But when he discovers he's been hired to vanish all traces of Steven Markoff, one of his best friends who just happened to work for the CIA, his job suddenly hits too close to home. This time, it's personal. Quinn is determined to get justice for Markoff. Plus, now, Markoff's girlfriend Jenny, who had been an assistant to an ambitious Congressman, has also disappeared. Racing from the corridors of power in Washington to the bustling streets of Singapore ...

Sam Mc Cready is The Deceiver, one of the Secret Intelligence Service's most unorthodox & most valued operatives, a legend in his own time. The end of the cold war has, however, strengthened the hand of the Whitehall mandarins, to whom he seems about as controllable as Genhis Khan, so Sam is to have his fate decided at a special hearing.

As part of the proceedings, four of Sam's key operations are reviewed: a clandestine mission into East Germany in 1985 to contact the top Russian spy General Pankratin; the second involving a KGB colonel who wants to defect
- but is he genuine? An audacious Qaddafi-inspired plot to ship arms to the IRA; & the fourth when Mc Cready presided over the aftermath of political murder & mayhem in the Caribbean.


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