Carnival — Julian Rathbone

Azure-winged magpies are beautiful and rare. Disturbed by a pair of them on a Spanish hill-side near the Portuguese frontier, Colin Shedfield and his beautiful young mistress follow the flight of the birds across a valley and discover four men digging a grave. A Spanish trades unionist is assassinated and, in the wake, come more killings, betrayals, cross and double-cross, in all of which Colin and his friends Weller and Buchan become unwillingly involved as the confused politics of Spain and Portugal flare into violence in a small border town.