Wide World Trilogy

Four years of horrific fighting have finally ended on the battlefield, but in the spring of 1919, Paris is filled with delegates from around the world who are still trying to hammer out the terms of peace. One such delegate is British diplomat Sir Henry Maxted, in charge of liaising with Brazilians regarding seized ships. But before a deal is reached, Sir Henry turns up dead outside a Montparnasse apartment building, apparently having fallen from the roof. His sons Max and Ashley are sent to Paris to collect the body, and it quickly becomes clear that the theory the French police have put forward is flawed. But since the murder of a diplomat could be disastrous for the peace conference, no one is keen to ask questions--except Max. What begins as an innocent inquiry into his father's death soon leads Max into a dangerous world of secret allegiances, international espionage, and people double-crossing each other at the highest levels of government. How far is he willing to go to discover the truth about the death of a father he barely knew? And how much will the authorities - and others - let him find out before threatening Max's own life?

In The Corners of the Globe, Max is sent on his first mission for legendary German spy Fritz Lemmer, the very man who claims responsibility for the murder of Max's father. As Max travels to Scotland's remote Orkney Islands to collect a mysterious grey file from a German captain, he must keep his true allegiances in mind. Further complications arise when a fellow tourist recognizes Max from their school days and threatens to blow his cover. Meanwhile, in Paris, Max's trusty sidekick Sam Twentyman has been promoted to chief mechanic for the British diplomatic fleet of cars. Though worried about his friend, Sam is content with his new set-up, until he receives warning that a nefarious element in the Japanese delegation is out to kill Lemmer-and they have reason to believe that Sam might be a link in the chain connected back to him. With the Germans about to enter the peace negotiations, the need for reconciliation among nations is greater than ever. But there is one secret so explosive that it threatens to endanger the whole peace conference, and Max is intent on finding it out.

The Treaty of Versailles has finally been signed, officially ending the World War I peace negotiations, and the action shifts east, to Tokyo, where a team assembled at Max's behest anxiously awaits his arrival on the docks. Max had arrived in Paris soon after the end of the Great War to investigate the suspicious death of his father; a British diplomat named Sir Henry, and soon plunged into a treacherous game of cat-and-mouse with the people behind his father's death: German spymaster Fritz Lemmer and the dark horse of the Japanese diplomatic contingent, Count Tomura. It is in Japan-where Sir Henry worked as a young government agent-that Max hopes to finally uncover the whole truth behind his father's murder and take down Lemmer's spy network once and for all. But what Max's cohort doesn't know is that his own storyline seems to have come to an end in a villa outside Marseilles. Stuck in limbo, the team decides to pursue their only lead-right into Lemmer's den.