A ROGUE'S GAMBIT

• Rollo always wanted to do something useful, if only to offset his natural leaning toward mischief and skullduggery.

A diamond smuggler with a stubborn conscience, he lives by a personal code that often sits uneasily alongside the law. When an extraordinary cache of military explosive unexpectedly falls into his hands, every obvious solution threatens catastrophe. What follows is a dangerous game of ingenuity, deception and impossible choices in which legality and morality drift steadily further apart.

Set against a richly drawn maritime world, A Roguish Gambit is far more than an adventure thriller. Alongside the suspense runs a story of unusually mature relationships, built on wit, loyalty, trust and mutual respect rather than cliché or melodrama. Here, love is neither sentimental nor naïve, but another expression of rare courage.

As danger closes in, Rollo discovers that the hardest decisions are rarely between good and evil. They lie between competing goods, conflicting loyalties and what might best be called rogue ethics-the uneasy conviction that the law and justice are not always the same thing.

Original, thought-provoking and enlivened by dry humor and memorable characters, A roguish Gambit is an intelligent adventure that asks an enduring question:

When every choice is wrong, how do you choose the one you can live with?.