Hammer to Fall

"It's London, the swinging sixties, and by all rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. Alas, his postings are usually rather unglamorous, but thankfully he has a knack for doing well for himself even in unpromising situations. In divided Berlin, he smuggled coffee into the East, a rather profitable racket until he had to transport something else-a spy. After an aborted mission on Berlin's famous "Bridge of Spies," Wilderness is both punished and kept out of trouble with a posting to remote northern Finland. Bored by his cover as a cultural attaché, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness finds another way to make money, this time by bringing vodka across the rather porous border into the USSR after an old KGB pal tells him there is-no joke-a vodka shortage in the USSR. But with MI6 intelligence from London pointing to the refining of cobalt in the region, a critical component in the casing of the atomic bomb, Wilderness's posting is getting more interesting by the minute. And when he gets sent to Prague just before the Soviets send in tanks to quash the riotous students and artists of the Prague Spring, even the enterprising Wilderness may be out of his depth. With old friends and old enemies alike turning up in Prague, deception and danger are around every corner"--