Robert Hale UK edition, published 1984.

BLURB Royle was a dangerous customer, a man born without a conscience, who could deal ruthlessly with trouble and live with the consequences. He refused to worry about problems before they arose, which could expose his Achilles' Heel of overconfidence, but his lack of scruples allowed him to earn a good living by walking through customs halls without displaying a trace of guilt - while wearing a body-belt packed with cocaine.    Between smuggling trips and periodic celebrations, he led a fairly untroubled life. Then outsiders began to trespass on his personal space. Some had their own motives; mostly hostile. Others did it for the money that came through the post along with Royle's photograph and his name and address. Someone wanted him dead.    The police joined the list of intruders following an encounter with a professional assassin, whose marriage Royle had broken up. Then came a £50,000 invitation and some revealing answers. Produced by Romiley Literary Circle in association with Romiley Arts Federation © Henry Smith, 1983. This edition © Henry Smith, 2003. By The Same Author Sergeant Enterprise Major Achievements Merchant Submarine The Necessary Peace * [A Desert Hotel] Doppelgänger Death Is A Stranger Death On The Record Death From High Ground Something In The Blood ** Allah's Thunder * published abridged in the USA and Canada as The Last Campaign ** written with L. Gordon Range This is the first volume of a sequence which began in the early 1980s and reached volume 5 in the early 2000s. The occasional nature of the books has created the interesting distortion of a story spread over two or three years of 'story' time set against a background of the changing technology and attitudes of a couple of decades.    No doubt the author could rework the sequence to position it in a particular decade of the 20th or 21st Century, but he has too much else to do and he can't be bothered. "Let the reader quibble if the discontinuities upset him", Mr. Smith says, "but don't expect me to take any notice."

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