Adam Tinker’s first job at The Firm sweeps him into fast-moving cross-currents of international politics and corruption, in Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean, and then in Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf.

Nothing is what it seems.

He becomes a small but influential player in flushing out a major conspiracy that could so easily lock up the world’s oil supplies. As he continues to probe, Adam encounters daring adventurers, awkward historical questions, idealistic defectors, and well-connected informers.

He witnesses a true axis of evil where the arms sales of many western democracies become convenient currency for western politicians to buy votes and stay in power.

Adam witnesses the growing potential for nuclear war in the Middle East as the stakes rise daily for Arab states to compete for supremacy with one another. He becomes increasingly uncomfortable with his role and leaves for another life, only to face a near death experience in the process.

Archer Swift’s fifth novel continues the theme of the developing Islamic world and its particular relations with the West. Recurring efforts in the Arab world to revive the Caliphate are only exceeded by the greed and lust for power of small ruling cliques in the Middle East, at once aided and, at times, hindered by western interests.