The Scorpion's Sting

In the late 1980's when Margaret Thatcher was in power and president Gorbachev was tearing down the Berlin wall, an urban terrorist wave was engulfing the UK, destroying the establishment, murdering the elite and swamping the security services. George Grant a retired SAS private detective becomes sucked into the maelstrom when his intended fiancée, Joanne Schaeffer is murdered at Stringfellows nightclub on the night when Grant planned to propose. Driven to uncover who is behind her murder Grant becomes enmeshed in the security forces desperate search for the organisers and perpetrators of the wave. As the English establishment is crumbling and the military are taking to the streets, Grant's search for leads takes him around the world and submerges him in the political intrigue behind the plot by a group of KGB refusenicks to pull down the oldest democracy in the world and replace it with a new form of communism. As the State opening of Parliament in November 1988 approaches and the cabinet falls into disarray, as industrialists and politicians are kidnapped and murdered and the economy grinds to a halt, the Country is engulfed in a feeling of dread. Ritchie has charted the fictional father of modern urban terrorism and the mother of Al-Qaeda. This is a thrilling, racy novel full of breathtaking twists and turns finishing with a dénouement of such audacity that even the Scorpion himself, the most feared terrorist in the world could not predict.