The third Joe Wilderness spy thriller from a master of the genre,
moving from icy Finland to tumultuous Cold War Prague, Hammer to Fall
is a tale of vodka smuggling and a legendary female Red Army general who
is playing a dangerous game
It's London, the swinging sixties, and by all rights MI6 spy Joe
Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, his
postings are more grim than glamorous. Luckily, Wilderness has a knack
for doing well for himself even in the most unpromising postings, though
this has gotten him into hot water in the past. A coffee-smuggling gig
in divided Berlin was a steady money-maker but things went pear-shaped
when he had to smuggle a spy back to the KGB instead. In the wake of
what became an embarrassing disaster for MI6, Wilderness is reprimanded
with a posting to remote northern Finland, under the guise of a cultural
exchange program to promote Britain abroad. Bored by his work, with
nothing to spy on, Wilderness finds another way to make money, this time
by smuggling vodka across the rather porous border into the USSR. He
strikes a deal with his old KGB pal Kostya, who explains to him there
is, no joke, a vodka shortage in the Soviet Union, following a grain
famine caused by Khrushchev's new agricultural policies. But there is
something fishy about why Kostya has suddenly turned up in Finland--and
MI6 intelligence from London points to a connection to the mining 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,
but more dangerous too.
Moving from the no-man's-land of Cold War Finland to the wild days of
the Prague Spring, and populated by old friends (including Inspector
Troy) and old enemies alike, Hammer to Fall is a gripping tale of
deception and skullduggery, of art and politics, a page-turning story of
the always riveting life of the British spy.
