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A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.

The Corners of the Globe (The Wide World - James Maxted, #2) by Robert Goddard

The Corners of the Globe: The Wide World - James Maxted 2 (The Wide World Trilogy) - Robert Goddard

 

Description: Spring, 1919. James ‘Max’ Maxted, former Great War flying ace, returns to the trail of murder, treachery and half-buried secrets he set out on in The Ways of the World. He left Paris after avenging the murder of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, a senior member of the British delegation to the post-war peace conference. But he was convinced there was more – much more – to be discovered about what Sir Henry had been trying to accomplish. And he suspected elusive German spymaster Fritz Lemmer knew the truth of it.

Now, enlisted under false colours in Lemmer’s service but with his loyalty pledged to the British Secret Service, Max sets out on his first – and possibly last – mission for Lemmer. It takes him to the far north of Scotland – to the Orkney Isles, where the German High Seas Fleet has been impounded in Scapa Flow, its fate to be decided at the conference-table in Paris. Max has been sent to recover a document held aboard one of the German ships. What that document contains forces him to break cover sooner than he would have wished and to embark on a desperate race south, towards London, with information that could destroy Lemmer – if Max, as seems unlikely, lives to deliver it...


Opening: MAX COULD ONLY WISH HE HAD MADE THE CROSSING FROM Scotland in such weather: calm, cool and benign, the sea sparkled, the sky blue, with puffs of cloud herded at the horizon like well-behaved sheep. He stepped out of the Ayre Hotel into the peace of early morning, lit a cigarette and gazed around him.



Only marked the first Maxted as 3* yet I think about it often. Goddard gets under the skin doesn't he! This is a series that must be read in sequence and the main theme is Paris as Peace Treaty hosts after WWI, complete with the contentious issue of the Shandong Penninsula.

He did his best not to flinch as Tomura cast him a raking, contemptuous glance in which several generations of arrogance had been distilled to a poisonous essence.' - p.289



Cliff-hangar ending


5* In Pale Battalions
3* Into the Blue
5* Past Caring
4* Caught In The Light
4* Long Time Coming
3* Never Go Back
3* Sight Unseen
TR Beyond Recall
3* Borrowed Time
3* Hand in Glove
WL Fault Line
4* Set In Stone
1* Found Wanting
2* Name To A Face
4* Painting The Darkness
1* Dying To Tell
3* Play to the End
3* Out of the Sun
3* Days Without Number
4* Take No Farewell
2* Closed Circle
TR Blood Count
3* Sea Change

3* The Ways of the World (The Wide World Trilogy #1)
4* The Corners of the Globe (The Wide World - James Maxted, #2)
TR The Ends of the Earth (The Wide World Trilogy, #3)