Frederick Danner

Barbara is an assertive, clever, liberated woman, her own boss. Who'd think she could be swept off her feet by a handsome stranger for whom she'd give up her career, London, everything? Especially as her new husband maybe wants to kill her.

Some time in the future, East and West have stopped maintaining standing armies and nuclear weapons. Instead, to settle their differences they pit different teams of crack combat specialists against each other.

Joe Beckett, seasoned citizen of the bedsitter belt, aged about 22, is the renegade son of modest, respectable parents and, to use his own description, 'an emotional leper'. He decides that he needs a violent shock to shake him back into life, and as a result accepts a commission to carry out the murder of a total stranger for a man he meets in a coffee bar...

Britain's biggest pop singer, Steven Shorter, receives unwavering adulation and possesses total control over his rabid fans, which includes nearly the entire population. Yet Shorter is not an autonomous performer -- he is little more than a puppet for the government, promoting whatever agenda they see fit. When a beautiful artist, Vanessa Ritchie, is commissioned to paint his portrait, she pushes Shorter to question his obedience to his manipulative handlers.