Borrowed Time (Alistair MacLean's UNACO) Hugh Miller 9780006499336

Militant religious extremists are taking over the peaceful Vale of Kashmir, dealing in drugs and guns to fund their war. When the mission looks impossible, who do you call? UNACO.

The Vale of Kashmir in India, precariously caught between Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, is one of the most serenely beautiful places on earth... and one of the most deadly. When Malcolm Philpott, head of UNACO, the United Nations' Anti-Crime Organization, receives a tip-off from a local priest that the peace of the valley is being threatened by militant religious extremists and the suspicion of a highly organized drug-trafficking ring, he sends in two of his top agents, Mike Graham and Sabrina Carver, to investigate and question the priest further.

But the priest is brutally murdered before they can arrive, and an ex-CIA-trained assassin, turned native, is the principal suspect. Suddenly Mike and Sabrina must undertake the lethal mission of infiltrating the murderous drug convoys and bringing the extremists under control before the volatile situation ignites and fans into an international blood bath.

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 he joined the Royal Navy. The two and a half years he spent aboard a wartime cruiser gave him the background for HMS Ulysses, his remarkably successful first novel, published in 1955. He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century, the author of 29 worldwide bestsellers, many of which have been filmed.

'A magnificent storyteller' Sunday Mirror

'The most successful British novelist of his time' Jack Higgins

'Alistar MacLean is one of the few people writing today who has a story to tell.' Daily Express