The Irregular: The utterly gripping new instalment in the Jonas Merrick series from the master of the spy thriller

Gerald Seymour

The Metropolitan Police have an unsolvable problem: 'Lachy' Wilson is a ruthless and obscenely rich British drugs lord who has bought off dozens of their officers. Thanks to these informants, no one can lay a glove on Wilson and he is considered 'untouchable'.

Wilson is dreaming of one last, game-changing shipment of heroin into the UK. The Met turn to the outside for help. Jonas Merrick is an MI5 officer, unspectacular in his own right but spectacular in the success he's had in dangerous counter terrorist operations. Can he thwart the drugs plot?

Jonas has an ace in the hole: Kenny 'Chopper' Harris is an ex-paratrooper and soon to be ex-member of the Flying Squad, looking for a new home, new loyalties. Jonas recruits him to get close to Wilson's Achilles's heel: Julie Wilson is the heir apparent to the family drugs empire and Lachy's go-between. Julie, like Chopper, is a lost soul - she dreams of life outside her father's brutal orbit. Her fate is about to change at their first meeting. A bond is formed, a resolution is made: Chopper will get her free of her family, if she'll betray her mission.

Soon their desperate game of deception begins - a game which will inevitably end in a bloody denouement.