A company stolen in plain sight. A secret hidden inside its technology. And a thief who intends to steal it back.
Years after leaving military intelligence, Julian Mercer built Acheron Cyber from nothing.
Drawing on a lifetime spent recognising hidden patterns, hostile intent and the significance of silence, Mercer created Sentinel, a sophisticated security system designed not merely to detect attacks, but to recognise the behaviour that precedes them.
Acheron became successful.
Then it was taken from him.
A carefully engineered corporate takeover removed Mercer from the company he founded, transferred control to investors he barely understood and left him watching from the outside as others claimed ownership of his life's work.
So Mercer turns to two old schoolfriends.
Harry 'Bunny' Manders is a journalist who has already discovered that respectable institutions can conceal remarkable crimes.
A.J. Raffles is something else entirely.
Cricketer. Gentleman. Master burglar.
And when Mercer tells him that someone has stolen his company, Raffles sees the problem rather differently.
If a company can be stolen, it can surely be stolen back.
What begins as an investigation into boardroom betrayal soon reveals something far more dangerous. Acheron's new owners were never interested simply in its customers, contracts or intellectual property.
They wanted Sentinel's memory.
Buried inside years of threat data is a pattern connecting modern corporate acquisitions to people and events from Mercer's intelligence past. Companies change hands. Directors disappear. Research teams are isolated. Strategic assets quietly move beyond scrutiny.
Someone has been doing this for years.
And Sentinel has learnt how to recognise them.
From London's glass towers and private boardrooms to the lingering shadows of Cold War intelligence, Raffles, Bunny and Mercer follow a trail of hidden ownership, old loyalties and carefully engineered betrayal.
But their opponents know who Mercer is.
They are beginning to understand Bunny.
And, most dangerously of all, they know exactly what kind of man Raffles is.
To recover Acheron, Raffles must attempt one of the most audacious thefts of his career.
Not money.
Not jewels.
Not secrets.
A company.
Raffles: The Silent Company is the second novel in the contemporary Raffles series, combining elegant crime, corporate intrigue, cyber security, espionage and the continuing adventures of E.W. Hornung's celebrated gentleman thief and Harry 'Bunny' Manders.
