Footsteps on a Drum

The cards dealt to Cunningham as a young man seem harsh. His wounds - emotional and physical - leave him with a weakness for causes and for women. Through many years, from Palestine in the 1940s to Haiti in the 1960s and Britain in the 1980s, he works in the wings of covert operations, smuggling and coups, finally achieving a kind of respectability. Then an old love affair lights a fuse of events that leads to nemesis from two directions at once.
This is a tale as moral and fatalistic as any by Graham Greene. It is told in a series of flash-backs, with tight dialogue, fast action, rich characterisation and authentic locations. These and the pungent themes that run through it - seduction, sedition, arms dealing, slavery, voodoo - give the book a cinematic quality which is wonderfully disturbing.