Cirrus@Austlit

'Alan McQueen, aka Mac, was once a star of the global intelligence community, renowned for being the Aussie spook who shot and killed Abu Sabaya, the world's most dangerous terrorist.

'But that was 2002.

'Now, during a routine assignment in Indonesia, McQueen discovers that Sabaya is not in fact dead. Instead he's teamed up with rogue CIA veteran Peter Garrison and is armed with a cache of stolen VX nerve agent he's threatening to deploy in a dramatic and deadly manner.

'Battling to stay one step ahead of Sabaya's hit-men, CIA double-agents and deep corruption within Australian intelligence, Mac must find the stolen VX before it's too late. His mission will take him on a chase through South-East Asia and test all of his considerable courage and ingenuity.' (Publisher's blurb)

'In the early hours of October 13, 2002, Australian spy Alan McQueen is jolted awake and told to immediately head to Bali, where more than two hundred people have been killed in a series of bomb blasts.

'Descending into Denpasar, Mac finds tensions running high between MI6, ASIS and the CIA, not to mention the Indonesian national police and Indonesian intel. Assigned to keep watch on the Australian forensic scientists working the bomb site - where the official line being peddled is that all the bombs were home-made - Mac learns that in fact one of the bombs was a military-grade mini-nuke.

'Trying to glean the motives for misleading the public, Mac pursues a shady group of businessmen-terrorists through the wilds of west Java and into Sumatra. But the trail goes dead when the terrorists fly out of Sumatra in an unmarked plane.

'Five years later, Mac is a freelance investigator living in Surfers Paradise, with his wife, Jenny, and baby daughter. During an apparently routine assignment looking into the people behind an Indonesian bio-engineering facility, Mac's partner is shot and MI6 turn up rather too quickly. Before too long Mac finds himself embroiled in the dangerous world of a new nuclear arms race.

'Forced on the run, with no Commonwealth back up, Mac suspects a connection between what's going on and the 2002 Bali bombings. Remembering back to a puzzling note he found back then with M4' written on it, he suddenly realises it referred to Mantiqui Four, the legendary Fourth Brigade of Jemaah Islamyiah, who are dedicated to an attack on Australian soil.

'The race is on as Mac discovers that the Fourth Brigade still have one remaining mini-nuke device. With ever-increasing tension, he trails his quarry from Indonesia to the Australian outback. In a thrilling denouement, involving three SAS troopers, several Israelis, the Indonesian police, and a Pakistani, Mac finds faced with more questions than answers. (Publisher's blurb)

'Alan McQueen (aka Mac) - the intrepid hero of Golden Serpent and Second Strike - is a tough, true-blue, resourceful Aussie. An intelligence agent, Mac spends a lot of his time doing undercover work in south east Asia.

Double Back sees Mac putting his life on the line fighting dangerous forces who will stop at nothing to sink the independence movement in East Timor. Fighting the good fight, Mac discovers a plot to use a deadly ethno-bomb which kills only native East Timorese - who don't share the ethnicity of most Indonesians . . .

Can Mac secure the ethno-bomb before it's too late?' (From the publisher's website.)

'Australia's super-spy, Alan McQueen, has been lured out of retirement. Any dreams Mac has of a cosy office job are shattered when he's dispatched to Singapore to oversee a covert mission. And when things go disastrously wrong, he not only has to defend his reputation in Australia but also stay out of jail in Vietnam.

'From the leafy suburbs of Singapore to the mean streets of Saigon, from the political infighting of Canberra to the old killing fields of Northern Cambodia, Mac has to use all his cunning - and a few unusual alliances - to get to the bottom of a conspiracy that could throw the world into a thermo-nuclear showdown.

'When nothing is what it seems, and death is only one mistake away, Mac finds himself both hunter and hunted as he pursues a truth that could save millions of lives.' (From the publisher's website.)