Darke Mission - Softcover

'Darke Mission recently won The People's Book Prize for Fiction and that award was extremely well merited by this first-time novel. Scott Caladon is clearly going to go far.' --Frederick Forsyth, CBE

Based on actual events interwoven with fiction and with an underlying theme of political and financial greed, Darke Mission is a story of good versus evil. The British government is secretly bankrupt. There is no money to pay the police, armed forces and the NHS. JJ Darke, lone parent and Scottish ex-intelligence officer, is blackmailed by an unscrupulous politician into stealing North Korea's gold bullion to plug Britain's catastrophic financial deficit and avoid widespread lawlessness. Darke, a successful financial strategist who has walked on the wrong side of insider trading, engages a French skunkworks outfit and edge of the envelope British F1 engineers to support the mission. They design a revolutionary process to transform the gold bars and smuggle them from North Korea, but the mission is fraught with danger and the team must scheme and fight their way out of trouble at every turn. The stakes are raised when a Russian stealth submarine, under North Korean control, is primed to launch a devastating nuclear attack on the USA. US Navy SEALs are ordered to capture the sub. Their mission is compromised and it becomes unexpectedly intertwined with Darke's. Darke's character changes. He seeks revenge and vows to protect his son at all costs. Darke Mission is a fast-paced crime thriller that will have fans of this genre desperate to know what happens next.