Two bodies, their throats cut with brutal precision, lie in a waste of blood in the dingy vestry of St Matthew's Church, Paddington. One is an alcoholic tramp; the other, Sir Paul Berowne, a recently resigned Minister of the Crown. Dalgliesh arrives to begin his investigations.
Unsettled by a brush with death and disenchanted with his job in the Force, Commander Adam Dalgliesh responds to an invitation to visit an old family friend, the chaplain at a private home for the disabled in Dorset. On arrival he discovers that his host has died suddenly.
See James Bond through the eyes of his lover, Vivienne Michel, in the tenth of Fleming's Bond adventures. Vivienne is running, from her past and from the evil brothers Sol Horror and Sluggsy Morant, and when 007 arrives at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court, in the north of New York State, he is her only hope.
“The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals. It’s the public itself. it’s us.” In a little over a generation the bones and sinews of the British economy – rail, energy, water, postal services, municipal housing – have been sold to remote, unaccountable private owners, often from overseas. In a series of brilliant portraits the award-winning novelist and journalist James Meek shows how Britain’s common wealth became private, and the impact it has had on us all: from the growing shortage of housing to spiralling energy bills.