Hostage to Fortune
by Carolyn McCrae
Husband and wife team, Skye and Fergal Shepherd, specialise in researching family histories but also act as consultant investigators to a section of the Security Services run by Gordon Hamilton. Having met in A Set of Lies they completed their first assignment in Second Strand and are called upon again in Hostage to Fortune. Gordon asks them to investigate the disappearance of Diane Hammill, a keeper of a safe house. Within a few days they believe they have located her but, against direct instructions, they then involve themselves in two other, seemingly unconnected, events that occur in Diane's home town within days of her disappearance: the assassination of prominent politician, Warwick Eden, and the apparent suicide of Ryan O'Donnell, a crew-member on Eden's luxury yacht. Skye and Fergal focus their attention on Guy Cliffe, another member of Eden's yacht crew, whose family appears to be linked to Warwick Eden's dead brother, Barford. What they...