Bøger af Roger Croft

Croft's moral wilderness and compilation of treachery ring far truer than the glamour of James Bond. And the clash between romance, personal loyalty, and institutional duplicity bears the stamp of one who knows.-Publishers Weekly Retired-journalist-turned-MI6-agent Michael Vaux made his debut in The Wayward Spy. Now, in the fourth Vaux thriller, he returns for another Middle Eastern adventure. Vaux is at loose ends after his longtime girlfriend, Anne, leaves to care for her ailing father. But on Vaux's first night alone, an old colleague from B3-a maverick subgroup of MI6-shows up at his cottage door. Someone in Beirut has unmasked dozens of MI6 agents and assets in the Middle East, endangering their lives and missions. Vaux is ordered out of semiretirement to find the traitor and stop the leaks. As Vaux goes deep undercover in Lebanon, he realizes that the field office is full of power players with their own agendas. In a city reeling from civil war and in an agency at odds with itself, Vaux needs to determine whom he can trust with his secrets. But if he makes one wrong move, he may never see Anne again.

In Roger Croft's explosive and mercurial espionage thriller, The Wayward Spy, he offers readers an idea of how the secret undercover spy world works-and how one might throw a wrench in it. Croft's take on things is part farce, complete irony, and unfettered action. When retiring newsman Michael Vaux returns to the neighborhood in Cairo where he grew up, he's reunited with former schoolmate Ahmed Abdul Kadri, who happens to be Syria's chief armaments buyer. With good reason, this piques the interest of the British Secret Service who orders him to tow his country's lines-and interests. Directed to pump critical intelligence from Kadri, who is presumably a bitter former official of the Syrian regime, when Vaux goes missing all bets are off. In a dynamic, masterfully crafted plot that takes readers from Geneva to Morocco, until the very end, it's nearly impossible to figure out the ruse or even, at times, what's at stake. Perhaps, when it comes down to it, there's nothing better than a willful spook.

Michael Vaux, ex-journalist and occasional MI6 operative, is back. The reluctant hero of The Wayward Spy and Operation Saladin is about to find himself pulled back into the violent world of espionage and counterterrorism. After a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda in the Muslim Maghreb terrorist group expresses a desire to defect, MI6 can't afford to ignore his request. The information he holds could help prevent future terrorist attacks. An envoy is sent from Morocco to negotiate a deal with MI6. But on his return, while under the protection of novice agent Sebastian Micklethwait, the envoy is assassinated en route, and MI6 calls on Vaux to locate and secure the would-be defector. Finding the al-Qaeda operative on the dusty Moroccan streets proves difficult, especially when Micklethwait is abducted outside a Tangier nightclub. Now Vaux has to find both men, with ever-increasing pressure from the home office and uncooperative CIA agents. Vaux's search will culminate in a bloody confrontation-and have repercussions that could place MI6 security in grave peril. A dizzying maze of shifting alliances and constant deceit, nothing is as it seems in The Maghreb Conspiracy.

Former MI6 agent Michael Vaux is again asked to serve queen and country after a stint in Syria and Egypt as a newsman. Following the sudden death of Syria's President Hafez Assad, Vaux's close friend Ahmed Kadri, Syria's chief arms buyer, is arrested. Syria's security agency [the GSD] then demands that Vaux return to Damascus from Cairo. Warned by Alena Hussein, GSD's chief of station in Cairo and Vaux's lover, that he faces serious questions about his relationship with Kadri and his earlier links with the British Secret Intelligence Service, Vaux fears for his safety and opts to quit Cairo. Enter MI6. His former employers offer to forgive all past misdeeds in return for his accepting a special assignment: to play the leading role in Operation Saladin, a brilliant plot to help a dissident Syrian nuclear scientist to defect to the UK along with his top-secret dossier on Syria's nuclear arms program and details of its stockpiles of nerve gas and other chemicial weapons. But events don't go according to plan: Dr. Nessim Said, the Syrian scientist, is shot dead in the English village where he has been sent with Vaux for a few days of relaxation and surreptitious debriefing. Hope of locating Said's secret dossier evaporates with his assassination. Who killed Said? Prime suspects include the Mossad whose 'targeted killings' of nuclear engineers working for Arab regimes has become a familiar pattern. But the Syrians, unaware of Said's plan to defect, blame MI6 and, in particular, Vaux. An Al-Saiqa [Syrian Special Forces] hit team is sent to hunt Vaux down. They locate the safe house where Vaux is holed up with his bodyguards. A fierce firefight ensues and the body count is heavy.