The only person standing between London and Armageddon is Brent Crude.

“Cobra, now.”

“One of our Dreadnoughts is missing…”

“It’s not a ship, it’s a boat.”

“My name is Adverse Camber. I am the Chairperson and Chief Executive Director of WEEVIL, Waffenschmuggel: Explosiv Expressgut – Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Lederhosen…

When Mimsy Borogoves gets the summons at 3 am to attend Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, she knows that Something Really Bad must have happened. A dastardly international criminal organization has hijacked a nuclear submarine and intends, should Her Majesty’s Government refuse to pay the ransom, to annihilate London.

Mimsy watches as the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the military top brass struggle to mount a coherent response to the threat. She alone knows that there is one man who is indispensable at this time of national crisis. His name is Crude. Brent Crude.

But Crude, charismatic, unpredictable, and flawed, is not a team player. When the Cobra committee rejects his strategic advice, he slips under cover, picks up a lead in a dingy Viennese Bier Keller, and embarks on a lone wolf hunt for Adverse Camber.

Meanwhile WEEVIL has a mole in Cobra. And Mimsy Borogoves knows the Prime Minister isn’t up to the job. Deep down, the PM knows it too. Just because you suffer from Impostor Syndrome doesn’t mean you aren’t a real fake.

'Fox stepped swiftly through the door. There was an audible click. And there came the sound of a bolt sliding into place. What follows is the stuff of nightmares...' Just when the bereaved and troubled Dr Alastair Cameron-Strange rediscovers his life on the other side of the world, the British authorities track him down. They recruit him on a mission which takes him to the farthest reaches of New Zealand, to Xanadu with all its grotesque gargoyles, chief among them Phineas Fox, the American business tycoon whose baleful eye is on the White House. There's something not quite right about Mr Fox, and Cameron-Strange, with the help of the beautiful Nikki, is determined to find out what it is. He survives six ordeals, but will he survive a seventh?

When Dr Alastair Cameron-Strange meets Alan Bletchley during a hectic shift in the emergency department, he believes he has discovered a violent terrorist threat hidden within an obscure cryptic crossword. Facing ridicule from his peers, Cameron-Strange takes matters into his own hands and embarks on a personal mission which leads him to the far north-west of Scotland and the edge of insanity. It is now a race against time, to tease out the cryptic clues and cut the puzzle short. Everything must click into place.