SOFT IN THE MIDDLE

Pursuing the lonely art of thriller- writing, Michael Dove studiously resists the fashionable professions only to end up, accidentally, in the most fashionable of all spying. It all begins at 3 a.m. one day in August when a dead friend, about to meet his death for the second time, rings to bequeath his mistress to Dove.
A wealthy and beautiful woman turns up in his bath asking for favours, and Dove is plunged into an adventure more exotic and dangerous than any he could have invented at his typewriter. Philomele, the wife of a sadistic in- dustrial baron, begs for protection for herself and Project Alleluia a stolen industrial secret she intends selling to the highest bidder. Dove's fee will be a quarter of a million pounds, plus fringe benefits. The henchmen of two rival gangs pursue Dove and client to their West Country hideaway a black se- ductress with a gun in her wig, a maquis hero with dangerous feet, and a perfumed redhead assassin among them. Dove escapes train crashes, rape, knifings, shootings only to succumb, nearly, to his own so-vulnerable flesh.
Mike Storey has evolved a racy, witty and original style that exactly suits his tale. His sex-obsessed hero, so English and outraged, tough yet sus- ceptible, deserves an honoured place in modern literature's gallery of danger men.