Publisher's Synopsis
There is abundant 'edge of your seat' action from aircraft cockpits to boardrooms to bedrooms in this follow-on to the James Hacking trilogy, with female characters as tough and feisty as the males.
James Hacking and his partner Loretta began their new life in the UK as a team driving heavy-goods articulated trucks around Europe, founded a successful transport company and re-opened Burscough's wartime airfield. Loretta was furious that James then took a risk too far and won a fuel transport contract in Iraq. When he went ahead anyway she left him to shack up with their Senior Flight Instructor, creating a prickly situation. With their emotional and financial arrangements ultimately settled into a reasonably comfortable accommodation they are established, popular in the local community and James has befriended a group of climbers from the local Burscough climbing club. The men are all competent hard-drinking mountaineers though their female partners tend to view the gung-ho activities of the men with indulgent derision, and unattached women members of the club with suspicion. Henry is an ex-army officer who learnt his trade as a fire-control technician supporting British tank regiments in Germany and now works as an IT engineer. He views life, including his own, with a cynical amused eye. His wife Veronica is an insecure Company Director in her moderately-rich parents' holiday park business. Their apparently perfect marriage has disturbing unaddressed undercurrents of discontent. Edward Broomhead is also an ex-military officer with a thriving InfoTech Company, fast cars, a company aircraft and a reputation for general recklessness. He has the same cavalier approach to life as Henry and is keen to poach him for his IT skills. Fergus is a somewhat dreamy laid-back long distance lorry driver who is shy about his aspirations to become an author. His girlfriend Brigit is a driven marketing consultant, on the schizophrenia spectrum though medically controlled, and scathing of his talent. She eventually makes a brutal remark that is the final straw in a very rocky relationship. Their separation only worsens her psychotic disorder. Paul is a blunt insensitive but kindly man who is careful with money and therefore the butt of peer-group humour. Also a truck driver, he has a successful side-business in trains and railways. His life-partner Audrey is a pretty woman who left school with poor academic qualifications and poor self-esteem. In a long-term unmarried relationship with young children, they are both sexually frustrated due to lack of skill and shyness, until their good friend Toni Baxter takes things in hand. Toni has herself escaped from the unfulfilling drudgery of a dead-end marriage, liberated after accepting a sarcastic bet from her husband. Being highly attractive, single and potentially available she is exceedingly interesting to men but a perceived threat to married women. Fergus, Paul, and Toni all work for James occasionally as professional drivers, as well as being firm friends. Toni, once a cleaner at the airfield, was helped by James to fulfill her real potential. Jane works in the NHS, a self-confident outgoing young woman and high-echelon gymnast whose rock-climbing and mountaineering skills make her a sought-after companion in the hills. Cherry is a bold and cheeky liberated woman who likes men, fun and mountains. A fiercely 'green' university lecturer, she doesn't pull her punches when it comes to the environment, is not above taking matters into her own hands, and is often in hot water. Throw into this soup of testosterone-fueled personalities a bullying banker steering the UK economy towards another catastrophic crash and you have a volatile recipe for blow-ups, fiscal, marital, and literal. Fly the Burscough mountaineers into a remote Scottish climbing hut in winter and the potential for fireworks goes critical.
