Blackmail North — Philip McCutchan

Hedge has another assignment for Detective Inspector Simon Shard…

Mackenzie Edinburgh Castle Mackintosh from Freetown in Sierra Leone, an oil geologist and a valuable one, has been released from a Libyan prison and is back in the UK, hoping to reunite with his Scottish wife.

Mackintosh's freedom is under question. The knowledge he possesses could wreck the British oil industry if it falls into the wrong hands… and there is also the question of where his loyalties lie. Hedge, from the Foreign Security Office thinks Shard needs to make contact with Mackintosh … but Shard isn't the only one assigned to this task.

As the investigation progresses, Shard realises that the men he is facing could be played against one another, but only if played right. But, from early on, it is clear that he is facing people who will go to whatever lengths to carry out their plans.

Thrown off track a number of times, Shard, finally, in the depths of The Hangman and under the guidance of Aurora Lindeman, is ready to end this once and for all … except, he didn't quite bargain for Hedge's presence … a presence that would do nothing more than wind Shard up and complicate things further...

Philip McCutchan began writing in 1956. Prior to this, he joined the Royal Navy on the outbreak of World War Two as an Ordinary Signalman and ended the war as a lieutenant, having served in destroyers, aircraft carriers, cruisers, a battleships battlecruiser, an armed trawler, and an ocean boarding vessel. For three years after the war he sailed in Orient Liners on the Australian run and then for a time became an assistant master in a preparatory school.