James Ward

Out of the blue, your sister gets kidnapped in one of the world's worst war-zones. As a top British intelligence officer, everyone agrees you're the ideal person to mount a rescue, only protocol forbids it. So you resign. Your name is John Mordred, the country is Libya, and what happens next is uncertain. All you know is, there are as many good as bad people in this world, alliances for justice - no matter how improbable - are always possible, and you never let terrorists come between you and your family.

"World War Offshore" - no one knows how it started, or who's behind it, but one thing's for certain: it's the biggest anti-capitalist demonstration the world has ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, spread across six continents, demanding an end to the "non-accountability of the 1%", re-regulation of the world's financial services, and a new era of social justice. MI7 takes the view that it's a problem best left to the appropriate law enforcement agencies - with the exception of one little detail. In order to get off the ground so effectively, its organisers had to bypass GCHQ in Britain, and the NSA in America. A breathtakingly impressive achievement, and possibly an ominous one. Next time, whoever does that may not be so benign. Agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate.

When the fourteen year-old daughter of a British government minister leaves the country to join ISIS, MI7 despatches a cohort of agents to Turkey to intercept her en route. However, maybe not everything is as it seems. How to explain, for example, her long-standing prior antipathy to Islamofascism? Her sudden conversion to radicalism on the very day of her departure? The fact that there is neither sight nor sign of her in Istanbul - or elsewhere?Agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate. Soon, he has theories of his own, and they fly in the face of the prevailing wisdom. Along the way, he is forced to face an impossible question. How to account for the appeal, to some British citizens, of an organisation that engages in genocide, mass torture and the reduction of ethnically dissimilar women to sex slaves? Barbarism seems to be banging on the doors of civilisation again, in a way unseen since the dark days of the 1930s. Yet for every evil Mordred uncovers, a counterbalancing good appears. His quest leads him from London to the shores of East Africa, and a confrontation with the overwhelming banality of violence and the all-pervading power of ideological malice.

When John Mordred leaves MI7, marries the woman he loves, and settles down to a relatively humdrum lifestyle, it ought to be a brave new start. But he and his wife have formerly been top-level spies, and they find the readjustment harder than they anticipated. Unfortunately, there's also a limit to how far they can walk away. Especially when any number of foreign intelligence agencies have hostile eyes on them. They were once two of Britain's best assets; they're currently untethered from central control. And actually, come to think if it, this is an excellent time to put an assassin on their tail. Get rid of them both, once and for all.

Jamaica, 1980. With a general election looming, the left-of-centre People's National Party stands to win a third term of radical social reform. Ties with Russia and Cuba will be strengthened. The IMF will be shown the door. Newly hatched revolutionary movements, like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the JRG in El Salvador, will be encouraged. Neither London nor Washington wants any of that. Unfortunately, however, the only person who could conceivably do anything about it is someone the Brits would rather not acknowledge. Ruby Parker's just twenty-five, but she and MI6 already have a shared history. And she's been written off by everyone there who matters. Written as a prequel to the other books in the Tales of MI7 series, Our Woman in Jamaica can be enjoyed by old and new readers alike.

When someone starts assassinating paparazzi in three countries, MI7 sits up. Apparently, the killer is none other than Dmitri Vassyli Kramski, retired SVR field-operative and former Kremlin prot g . True, the Cold War is long finished, but everyone knows Vladimir Putin is as unhappy for Russia to play second fiddle on the international stage as even the most strident of his Communist predecessors. In 2010 therefore, East-West relations remain as tortuous as ever.Kramski's trail leads deep into London's migr community, forcing his pursuers into conflict with an unknown organisation bent on protecting him. Bit by bit, he begins to look less like a professional assassin and more like someone plotting to scupper the foundations of Western democracy itself. To compound matters, the Russians are as baffled by him as anyone.

By universal consensus, there's only one exhibition worth seeing at this year's Venice Biennale. Giuditta Cancellieri's Il Timore di Dio, six paintings of something as yet undisclosed. Don't bother buying tickets, though. A court order means no one's getting in, not even the artist's closest associates. And the city's been filling with felons. Most observers don't think that's an accident: at least one rumour suggests the paintings depict Italy's most powerful gangsters, or its politicians, in compromising positions. And there are more startling conjectures. Yet for all anyone really knows, the six canvases may be completely blank. In any case, Signorina Cancellieri is no ordinary artist. A 25-year-old AIDS-victim from one of the toughest districts of Naples, she's also closely linked to one of MI7's oldest enemies, Constantius Sopa. As the temperature rises to boiling point, MI7 agent Gavin Freedman is dispatched from London to find out just what is going on.

In Afghanistan, British secret servicewoman Marcie Brown, posing as the third wife of one of ISAF's most trusted operatives, is killed in a drone strike. Or at least, that's what the official report states. Deep inside enemy territory, what remains of her body is deemed irrecoverable. Seven thousand miles away, her grieving husband, MI7 officer Nicholas Fleming, joins a police investigation which stumbles onto an Islamist plot to bomb central London. Handed responsibility for the counter-terrorism initiative, he uncovers evidence that one of the bombers is his wife. By degrees, the utterly unbelievable becomes plausible and, at last, undeniable. And to make matters worse, there's evidence that she's slowly recovering her memory ...

2019. Russia's Web Brigades have created a divided West, but the European and the American intelligence services are getting wise to their tactics. When Stanislav Kuznetsov, the FSB's Director of Overseas Strategic Affairs, entrusts a group of young idealists with the task of devising the next phase in the disruption of Russia's enemies, little does he suspect that six weeks later, they'll come up with a plan to suborn the British Broadcasting Corporation. His first reaction is mingled incredulity and exasperation. Have they taken leave of their senses?But then he studies the details. And actually, it's not as far-fetched as it looks. In fact it's entirely workable. When news of the plot reaches Britain, MI7 agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate. He quickly finds himself dealing with influential people in his own country who see the BBC as more than problematic, and who would dearly like to see it cut down to size. Could they conceivably have a point? In a media-saturated age, what remains of the corporation's historic remit to inform, educate and entertain? Is it still capable of living up to that lofty ideal, or is it not longer fit for purpose?

When John Mordred leaves MI7, marries the woman he loves, and settles down to a relatively humdrum lifestyle, it ought to be a brave new start. But he and his wife have formerly been top-level spies, and they find the readjustment harder than they anticipated.Unfortunately, there's also a limit to how far they can walk away. Especially when any number of foreign intelligence agencies have hostile eyes on them. They were once two of Britain's best assets; they're currently untethered from central control.And actually, come to think if it, this is an excellent time to put an assassin on their tail. Get rid of them both, once and for all.

When Ruby Parker, Head of MI7's Red Department, is hospitalised by a burglar, all is not as it seems. Her removal coincides with a series of catastrophes for British spies in hostile territories abroad, and some very shifty behaviour by the new Acting Head of Red Department, Patrick Atherton. Atherton dislikes Red's established hierarchy, which includes all its officers without exception, and possibly John Mordred in particular. But then things take a turn for the strange. Atherton has an apparent breakdown; he gets up from his desk, leaves Thames House and apparently goes off radar. Important men and women across London start dying in violent circumstances. It simultaneously transpires that the mysterious Black Department is taking a close interest in all this. And not quite from its usual distance.Suddenly, John Mordred himself becomes the focus of intensely hostile scrutiny. And when he, too, goes off radar, it's because he no longer has a choice. For a while, nothing seems to make sense. Then, shockingly, it does.

A 51-year-old pub landlord from Hammersmith, a DJ from Lambeth, a prize-winning novelist influenced by Charles Dickens and Iain Sinclair, a young British intelligence officer: just four of the ten contenders in 2018's truly fabulous 'Ultimate Londoner' competition With a 5 million prize-pot and an awards ceremony on the top floor of The Gherkin, it's the last word in up-to-the-minute kudos.Or perhaps not. To begin with, no one has the faintest idea where it came from. Or how it garnered so much publicity. And not even the 'candidates' themselves know how they were selected. For the intelligence officer, John Mordred, its unsolicited exposure is profoundly unwelcome.So far, so irritating. But then the candidates start dying.As Mordred investigates, the truth slowly emerges. And it's stranger and more shocking than anyone could possibly have imagined.The Ultimate Londoner. Who will you vote for?

After a chance skirmish with an armed killer in central London, agent John Mordred ends up in hospital, condition critical. Six weeks and a full recovery later, he's persuaded it's purely a police matter, one he should forget about.But nothing in MI7 is ever that simple. There's more to this particular incident than meets the eye and unnamed people in high places want it investigating. They believe Mordred's the man for the job. Add to the mix five missing IMF officials, the kidnapping of a top British financier in Venezuela, evidence of a related cover-up in Whitehall, a young and unpredictable London Lord Mayor with acute delusions of grandeur, plus - most bizarrely - persistent rumours of local UFO sightings. Things threaten to spin radically out of control.

Prem Sharma's wedding to Nasreen Sanim collapses when she uncharacteristically bows to her conscience and exits the ceremony. After wandering alone to Middlesbrough town centre, he bumps into Ursula Petulengov , an illegal migrant who manages to convince him she's someone she's not. Warming to her, despite his ordeal, and dimly sensing her true predicament, he invites her to stay with him on a friends-only basis. She accepts. Fast forward a few months, and all three are beleaguered by a network of women-traffickers who will stop at nothing to expand their empire. If that means torturing Prem to death, and forcing Ursula and Nasreen into sex-slavery, so be it. Given that their survival depends upon it, can our three protagonists learn to cooperate? Can they do even better, and take the fight to the enemy? And just what is the 'weird problem of good' anyway?

"World War Offshore" - no one knows how it started, or who's behind it, but one thing's for certain: it's the biggest anti-capitalist demonstration the world has ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, spread across six continents, demanding an end to the "non-accountability of the 1%", re-regulation of the world's financial services, and a new era of social justice.MI7 takes the view that it's a problem best left to the appropriate law enforcement agencies - with the exception of one little detail. In order to get off the ground so effectively, its organisers had to bypass GCHQ in Britain, and the NSA in America. A breathtakingly impressive achievement, and possibly an ominous one. Next time, whoever does that may not be so benign. Agent John Mordred is assigned to investigate. His enquiry takes him halfway across the globe before depositing him in the Crown dependency of Jersey for what looks like a war of attrition.