Coronet Books Series

Joseph Hone's The Paris Trap, first published in 1977, saw him step aside from his sequence of 'Peter Marlow' novels to offer a different kind of political thriller.

Jim Hackett and Harry Tyson first met in Paris, in days of hope - Hackett a promising actor, Tyson a budding writer. Twenty years later, their dreams soured, they are reunited in Paris for a substantive project: Hackett, now a movie actor, has been cast in a major film derived from a spy novel authored by Tyson, who now works for British intelligence. But the plot of the film, concerning a Palestinian terrorist cell, is about to be overtaken in the dramatic stakes by real events.

'A fine example of a vastly popular genre - the thinking man's thriller.' Irish Times

'Through a distorting filter of betrayals, private and public, Joseph Hone conducts us to a final scene so dire that Hamlet by comparison leaves the stage tidy.' Guardian

The Private Sector

by Joseph Hone

Published 1 March 1975

With The Private Sector (1971) Joseph Hone introduced readers to British intelligence officer Peter Marlow, who would be the protagonist of three further novels - all now reissued in Faber Finds. Cairo, May 1967: Marlow is sent from London to find his friend and fellow spy Henry Edwards, who has vanished. In the course of this fool's errand he also finds his former wife, Bridget, now deeply entangled with Edwards. Marlow moves easily between British and Egyptian intelligence branches, attaching allegiance to neither - until he becomes the unwitting victim of a failed plot to topple Nasser. "An absolutely terrific espionage novel". (James Dickey). "A brilliant and calculated spy story...[Hone's] characters and the quality of the writing are so good that he has transcended the usual limitations of the genre." (Times Literary Supplement).

The Sixth Directorate

by Joseph Hone

Published 16 June 1975

The Sixth Directorate (1975) was the second of Joseph Hone's quartet of 'Peter Marlow' spy novels, all now reissued as Faber Finds. In prison his name had been Marlow. When British Intelligence released him to impersonate a dangerous KGB agent, he became George Graham, a man with an incredible past and a highly questionable future. But even the British didn't know everything about Graham, as Marlow discovered. Then he came face-to-face with Graham's mistress and thought the game was up. But it was just beginning..."Intelligent, sharp and deviously plotted...Here is a new force in the field of spy stories". (Daily Telegraph). "One of the best suspense novels of the last ten years. It has elegance, wit, sympathy, irony, surprise, action, a rueful love affair and a melancholy 'Decline of the West' mood." (New York Times).