Alan Blair

Excavations at Carnoustie produced exceptional archaeological results from the prehistoric past. The remains of the longest early Neolithic timber hall so far found in Scotland were identified. Beside it were the postholes and pits of another contemporary but less well preserved large hall. A final but smaller timber hall was constructed at one end but within the footprint of the largest timber hall. This latter structure indicated the importance of the place and the perpetuation of ideologies and traditions of the earlier building. During the later Neolithic, other evidence included the sparse remains of an oval house built over the remains of one timber hall with temporary re-occupation of part of another. The main focus of activities during the middle and late Neolithic were groups of pits whose presence indicated changes in social structure and possibly economic conditions. A period of abandonment with only sporadic use of the area during the early Bronze Age was followed by a roundhouse settlement. A small number of buildings of the middle and late Bronze Age were replaced in rotation. The last buildings were intimately associated with a rare late Bronze Age metalwork hoard, buried close to them. The hoard included a sword, spearhead with gold decoration and a long pin wrapped in textile and sheep-skin.

“I do have one piece of useful intelligence,” said Freddie. “Guy Chesterton’s out.” Adam White, British ambassador in Oslo, is shocked to learn that the man who tried to kill him fifteen years earlier in Oxford is out of prison and seeking revenge. In the same week, MI6 officer Hugh Tennyson informs Adam that a man murdered on an Oslo train is Leonid Zabolotny, a Russian FSB agent claiming knowledge of a mole in the Norwegian security service (the PST) and of an unspecified threat to British security. Hugh joins Oslo Police detective Rebekka Storvik in the hunt for the killer. Others soon involved are Adam’s lover, Alison Webster, the former Oxford student Taraneh Esfahani and her onetime MI6 handler, Freddie Gardiner, a sworn enemy of Hugh Tennyson. How and when will Chesterton strike? Who is the PST mole? What is the threat to British security? The Deputy head of the PST, Holger Selberg, is arrested, but protests his innocence. Has he been framed? If so, who by? There is no shortage of suspects, and any number of twists and turns, as the intertwined stories come to a series of unexpected climaxes.