Easter 1971: Catherine Windrell, niece of the 17th earl, had been kidnapped. Her cousin Richard, with whom she didn't get on, had been unlucky enough to be giving her a lift at the time of the ambush. Their cell was an unheated underground room. The cold, boredom, and calculated acts of intimidation were part of the plan to reduce the prisoners to fearful compliance.
    Brian Selly and his two helpers had demanded an inflation-proof ransom of £50,000. A counter-terrorism department of the Security Service was struggling to unravel Selly's trail of misdirection. A plan evolved over three years was working in unexpected ways on the prisoners, however.
    As Catherine and Richard suffered in their cold, silent cell, they learned to co-operate and they began to make plans of their own; plans which would put the lives of everyone, kidnappers and prisoners alike, in extreme danger.

A first edition [above, left] was published in the UK and the Commonwealth in an abridged form by Robert Hale, Ltd. in 1986 at £9.50 (cheap!). The unabridged version was published by Farrago & Farrago in 1998.