Fifteen years ago Susan Blacklock disappeared. Although Detective Inspector Frank Elder has taken early retirement, the case still plagues his mind. Prime suspects, Shane Donald and Alan McKeirnan, were convicted a year later of the brutal rape and murder of a young girl, and now that Shane has been granted parole, Elder feels compelled to revisit the past. Then Shane disappears and another young girl is murdered. Elder's involvement is now crucial. Taunted by postcards from the killer, an increasingly desperate Elder battles to keep his estranged family from being drawn into the very heart of the crime.

The greatest threat to the Western world comes not in the form of a bomb, nor a missile, but in the shape of a mega-Tsunami. There is one place where such a geophysical catastrophe could begin, the volcano Cumbre Vieja, situated on the southwest corner of La Palma in the Canary Islands. Surrounded deep underground by a marine cold-water lake, a nuclear bomb strategically aimed in the centre of Cumbre Vieja will set off a chain of events that will cause the entire mountain to explode into the sea, giving rise to the biggest tidal wave for 4000 years. Nine hours later the 150-foot wave will hit the United States Eastern Coast flooding it for twelve miles inland from Maine to Miami.
The single most dangerous weapon that the middle eastern terrorists possess is a nuclear submarine armed with the submerged launch nuclear missile Sdmitar, aimed to detonate bang in the middle of the volcano.
First the terrorists blow up Mt St Helens in Washington State, and then Monserrat, to prove they know what they're doing. The Pentagon refuse to buckle under a terrorist demand for the US military to evacuate the Middle East. The retired Admiral Arnold Morgan is swept to power, and is back in the White House. Under his leadership, the US Navy must either find the nuclear submarine in a million square miles of Atlantic water or begin the logistically nightmarish evacuation of the entire US East Coast.

Patrick Robinson was a journalist before becoming a full-time writer, His six previous novels have been bestsellers in Britain and America.