Cirrus@Austlit

'In the fifty years between 1757 and 1815, Britain lost an empire, won another and emerged from the epic Napoleonic wars as the greatest power the world had ever seen.

'But no empire comes about by accident. The spread of British power was fuelled by the ambition and zeal of a host of larger-than-life personalities. But while history records the actions of those who chose familiar public paths to make their mark, others who served under a necessary cloak of silence have left no memorials. There were men who gave their whole lives to these hidden struggles.

'At the centre of these machinations lay one secret institution: the Decipherers - the code breakers, the interceptors of letters and messages, the analysers of intelligence - constantly locked in silent deadly combat with the Cabinet Noir, the Black Chamber, the secret agency of Britain's greatest enemy, France. Working tirelessly with the Decipherers was a small number of trusted agents whose secret trade carried by neccessity into the deepest conflicts of empire and Alistair Douglas was one of them...' (From the publisher's website.)

'December 1767. Alistair Douglas has been using the Decipherers, a secret network of contacts in London, to attempt to find two men implicated in a series of political murders in the mutinous American colonies. Rumours fly as anonymously printed attacks on the King and his ministers flow through the city. But, frustratingly, there are few leads. Douglas is therefore pleased when he is assigned to a new duty. He must travel to Paris and ensure the outlawed radical writer and politician John Wilkes returns to England -- the stipulation being that Wilkes must return of his own volition. It is soon clear there is a serious conspiracy afoot -- and John Wilkes is first on the list of suspects. But the Decipherers have reason to believe there is a highly placed intimate of the present government also involved ...'

Source Publisher's blurb.

'The third book in the Decipherer's Chronicles

'In August 1781 Alistair Douglas is sent by the British spy network the Decipherers to York Town in the American Colonies.

'He is tasked with assisting the Loyalist colonists of Virginia to organize themselves into a militia and fight the Revolutionaries on behalf of the King. Douglas goes undercover as a grain merchant aboard a French military vessel in Chesapeake Bay, where he discovers that matters have progressed much further than anyone in London had imagined... While Lord Cornwallis turns all his efforts to fortifying York Town, Douglas intercepts disturbing correspondence suggesting that they might be protecting themselves in the wrong place.

'When a British father and son, Cable and David Morgan, are captured by the French as spies, matters turn critical. Douglas is determined to do whatever it takes to save them, knowing that if he can get them back they might just have a chance to reverse British fortunes before it's too late ...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.