The Year of the Scorpion

The first bullet caught the girl in the shoulder, the second in the thigh… The Chinese border guard stopped firing - she was dead, snared in the wire that had ended her dash for freedom. The Hong Kong police could collect her body in the morning. The murderous old men who clung to power in Peking would never know how close she had come to unmasking their prize spymaster in the West: The elusive Scorpion, who has penetrated the nerve centre of the Trident submarines they fear so much because they still have no defence against them. And now Scorpion has also penetrated the seething opposition that threatens to destroy the last and greatest Communist empire . . . The Year of the Scorpion is Michael Hartland’s finest achievement – an explosive thriller packed with action, courage, love and betrayal. Praise for The Year of the Scorpion: ‘One of the best thrillers I have ever read’ - The Independent ‘Complex as a Chinese puzzle, distinguished by Hartland’s exotic settings in the Far East and his precise portraits of the agents’ - Los Angeles Times Before taking up writing, Michael Hartland spent twenty years travelling widely in Europe and the Far East as a diplomat, then working in counter-terrorism and for the United Nations. His series of five espionage novels published in the 1980s and 90s established him as one of the leading thriller writers in Britain and the United States. They have been translated into twenty-seven European languages and Japanese – and remain among the most iconic, chilling and gripping spy novels ever published. Michael Hartland and his family live in Devon.