It wasn't just a tank. It was the prototype, next generation, Main Battle Tank, with a radically new gun. And now it was missing, presumed to be about to fall into hostile hands. Secretly loaned to the Jordanian army for desert evaluation tests, it had vanished in the confusion of a revolt by an entire armoured brigade. From the bloody evidence of a London hotel siege it is clear that the events are deliberately connected. The MBT90 must be found, and if necessary, destroyed, in order to preserve its secrets. SAS-trained Major Harry Maxim is sent in. But what starts as a simple demolition job is about to turn into a desperate run for freedom as their tank is hunted across a desert wilderness. First published in 1988, Uncle Target is the fourth and final novel from Gavin Lyall's Harry Maxim series.About the AuthorGavin Lyall (1932-2003) lived in Hampstead and enjoyed sailing on the Thames in his motor cruiser. From 1959 to 1962 he was a newspaper reporter and the aviation correspondent for the Sunday Times. His first novel, The Wrong Side of the Sky, was published in 1961, drawing from his personal experiences in the Libyan Desert and in Greece. Lyall left journalism in 1963 to become a full-time author, writing 17 novels before his death in 2003.

Major Harry Maxim, formerly of the SAS, is a mysterious man who lost his wife to a horrific plane accident. He is as surprised as anyone when he is hired by 10 Downing Street to assist in matters of defence and security. Using all the knowledge from his days in military intelligence, he tries to understand and counter a number of suspect events: a suicide at the ministry of defence, a hand grenade thrown through the door of number ten and a Czech defector with a file worth killing for. They all seem to point towards Professor John Tyler, a nuclear strategist who will state Britain's case when Europe's think tank on Armageddon gathers in Luxembourg. First published in 1980, The Secret Servant begins Gavin Lyall's Harry Maxim series.

Shabby Bill Carey pilots his doddering amphibious plane over the forests of northern Finland, making a precarious living flying aerial survey flights and occasional charter cargo flights of dubious legitimacy in his beat-up old de Havilland Beaver. Despite his perpetual hangover, Carey s a wizard with planes and very quick at clues when he suspect plotting and sabotage.Towards the end of the flying season, a wealthy American hunter hires him to fly into a prohibited part of Finland near the Soviet border in order to hunt bear. Subsequently, he is suspected by the Finnish secret police for smuggling and espionage. Things get even more serious when the American hunter's beautiful sister turns up to search for her brother, and his fellow bush pilots start getting killed off in a series of suspicious accidents. Cary suspects that the events he is increasingly involved in may stem from an incident in his wartime past.The Most Dangerous Game was a runner-up for the British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award in 1964. 

Reviewed by Hilary Williamson I've enjoyed all of Gavin Lyall's standalone thrillers – stories like Midnight Plus One, The Most Dangerous Game, and The Wrong Side of the Sky – but especially like his Major Maxim series. Ex-SAS Harry Maxim, the very model of a modern military gentleman, is straight as an arrow, which does not serve him well when involved with politicians and spies – which he is all too often. He gets into very serious trouble in every episode, but somehow always comes through with his integrity intact. Harry's wife Jenny died in a bombed plane and his parents help him raise his son Chris – he's continually guilt-ridden when his job prevents him from spending time with his son. At this point in the series, Harry Maxim is seconded to 10 Downing Street, working for the lazy but very wily George Harbinger, and often in liaison (and in conflict) with the devious, somewhat amoral, Security Service agent Agnes Algar – of course, their prickly relationship slowly and steadily develops into something stronger, to the initial dismay of both parties. This story starts with analysts monitoring East German news and speculating about a rising political star named Gustav Eismark. We see an old woman, a talented but damaged musician, who lives in the country and teaches piano. Then Harry meets an old army friend who asks for his help for a deserter, Ron Blagg, who got involved in a special op on the request of a woman, Mrs. Howard, he believed was a British agent. Two people died in Germany, Blagg fled, and now he wants in from the cold. Harry tries to help him. Agnes is called to a high level meeting 'To consider the conduct of Major H. R. Maxim'. His digging into Blagg's story has 'started a constitutional crisis'. The plot quickly thickens, and the search is on for information obtained by the now dead Mrs. Howard. Harry heads to Germany, and then works under the radar, helped by Agnes. When Harry tells Agnes the secret that Eismark had been trying so hard to hide, she replies 'God Almighty' to which his answer is, 'He's seen worse in His time.' If you haven't met Major Maxim yet, then you really should start reading this thrilling military/spy series.

When a Turkish bandit holds engineers building the Baghdad Railway to ransom, Britain is secretly relieved as the Railway threatens the Persian Gulf oil-fields. Feigning help, the Foreign Office sends the notorious Lady Kelso, once lover of the bandit chief, with Captain Matthew Ranklin and Conall O'Gilroy of the fledgling Secret Service Bureau as 'diplomatic protection'. A journey by the Kaiser's private train to the bandit stronghold leads through ambush, betrayal, murder and bombardment. For there are others - German, Turkish and French - honourably putting their countries' interests above everything. In the misty Turkish mountains, all of Ranklin's military experience and O'Gilroy's back-streets savvy are tested to the full

Lewis Cane is an ex-SOE operative who worked with the French Resistance against Nazi Germany. He stayed in Paris after the end of World War II, making a somewhat precarious living as a business expediter. One day he is approached by a lawyer, Henri Merlin, a former resistance comrade, with a job: a wealthy international financier, Maganhard, needs to be driven from Brittany to Liechtenstein in secrecy and within three days. The fact that the French Sûreté have an open arrest warrant out on Maganhard seemed like a simple problem. However, when half the hit-men in Europe start gunning for them, things get complicated quickly. As Cane races the clock, the police, and the assassins across France and Switzerland, whom can he trust? His alcoholic and trigger-happy bodyguard? Maganhard's mysterious private secretary who seemingly goes out of her way to create problems? Or his former Resistance contacts, who might or might not sell him out for the highest price?

Roy Case,ex-Royal Air Force, makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights around the Mediterranean in an old Beechcraft Queen Air. His dreams of having his own plane and charter company rapidly fading due to age and lack of money. However, conditions begin spiral out of control when he lands in Cyprus. Not only did his employers go bankrupt, leaving him stranded and without pay, but his plane is impounded, he is mugged by mysterious assailants on a dark back street, and is trailed by an Israeli Mossad agent. When he finds that the cases clearly marked "champagne" that he was supposed to be flying to Lebanon contain machine guns instead, he suspects that things are going to get a lot worse.When Case's friend Cavitt shows up, fresh from an Israeli prison, together with a mysterious Austrian archaeologist and his even more mysterious daughter, the plot thickens with hidden Crusader treasure, Lebanese gangsters, betrayal and murder.

'Mr Kemp - I believe you smuggle art? I have a little proposition...'It seemed like money for old rope. All Kemp had to do was arrange the smooth transportation of the works of art his wealthy patron was secretly buying on behalf of the Nicaraguan government across the frontier into Switzerland. And anything was preferable to London in January.It started to go badly wrong when he woke up in a Zurich park with a bump the size of a burial mound on his head, minus the priceless Cezanne he'd been carrying. The very next day he ran into Harry Burroughs at the airport. Kemp suspected it wasn't just coincidence.For Burroughs was a fine-art dealer, and an even finer crook. If he was mixed up in all this, Kemp knew that from now on he would have to earn his money - the hard way...

British Army Major Harry Maxim has just completed Resistance training in preparation against a possible Russian military action on England, when suddenly the President of the U.S. is shot at in London by somebody using a Russian rifle. When there is no official response to this provocative act, Maxim takes the reconnaissance initiative. With the initially half-hearted help of his friend George Harbinger of the ministry of defense, he sets out to track down the originators of the assassination attempt. He comes to suspect early on that the act was neither perpetrated by the Russians nor actually aimed at the President, and the trail which leads him to the Crocus List and its secret operations takes him from London to Washington, St. Louis and East Berlin. This third adventure featuring the immensely likable Major (after The Secret Servant and The Conduct of Major Maxim) brims with intelligence and spirit. It's an irrepressible, entertaining and thought-provoking jaunt through the ins and outs of the international espionage trade.

As a young naval officer, King George V kept a mistress in Portsmouth. In 1914 an American anarchist is about to be extradited, until he claims he is the King's son -- and heir to the throne. Charged with the investigation, Captains Ranklin and O'Gilroy discover there is no smoke without gunfire.**

(Honour Series Book 2)The Italian senator thinks the fledgling British Secret Service can offer him protection from assassins, an aeroplane and the means of fuelling a strike in a Trieste shipyard. Those recruited could accidentally change history in this adventure set in the early days of modern espionage.**