'In the summer of 1939, as a two-year-old in London, I was given away by my parents to a Chelsea friend and taken on the Irish Mail to Dublin.' Thus begins this extraordinary memoir by travel writer and novelist Joseph Hone, one of eight children farmed out by impecunious and inebriate parents, who was raised at Maidenhall in County Kilkenny by the historian and essayist Hubert Butler and his wife Peggy, sister of Tyrone Guthrie of Annaghmakerrig in County Monaghan. The story is told through a cache of letters discovered on Hubert Butler's death between he and his friend 'Old Joe', Little Joe's grandfather and biographer of Yeats and George Moore, upon whom fell the financial responsibility for his grandson's upbringing. This account of Joseph Hone's childhood and youth during the 1940s and 50s in rural Ireland, among the privileged and artistic elite of his generation living down-at-heel if comfortable lives in a newly emergent state, is an enthralling reminder of the...

The Valley of the Fox (1980) was the final entry in Joseph Hone's quartet of 'Peter Marlow' spy novels, all now reissued as Faber Finds.Marlow believes he is done with the insane world of espionage, having found a haven in the Cotswolds with his wife and step-daughter. Then gunfire shatters the night and he is forced to run for cover into the nearby woodland. Marlow finds himself in a landscape that has become suddenly, venomously hostile. And when sinister vengeance from Africa reaches deep into rural England, he must turn savage to rescue his terrified step-daughter and make good his escape. 'A beguiling yarn... that harks back to an older romantic tradition with Buchanesque notions of honour and decency.' Sunday Independent 'A carefully thought-out psychological novel . . . the writing is of such strength' Daily Telegraph

The Flowers of the Forest (1980) was the second of Joseph Hone's quartet of 'Peter Marlow' spy novels, all now reissued as Faber Finds.It is an idyllic setting: the sunlit forest sweeping down to the valley, the heather loud with bees. But one hive stands dismantled and a man has vanished - Lindsay Phillips, section head in the Secret Service. Marlow thinks he has left the world of espionage behind, but unexpected pressures lead him to take up the search for Phillips - whereupon he is caught up in a web of violence and intrigue.'This is the best thriller I've found in years, perhaps the best I remember... The weaving of the story is so close, so tight, that no image, no hint is ever wasted.' Isabel Quigly, Financial Times'A pleasure to read.' Times Literary Supplement

Ben Contini, a disenchanted painter of considerable talent, has just buried his mother. Rifling through the attic of her Kilkenny house he stumbles across a Modigliani nude, worth millions. Determined to learn the provenance of the painting, he and Elsa, a disturbed and secretive woman who accosts him at the funeral, become embroiled in the sinister world of Nazi art theft. But they are not the only one with an interest in the painting... Together they set off on a frantic journey that leads them from Dublin to France via the Cotswolds, down the Canal du Midi into Italy. The intrigue surrounding the shadowy half-truths about their exotic families becomes increasingly sinister as Ben and Elsa are forced to confront their pasts and their buried demons. Set in the 1980s, this is a fantastic new book from established thriller writer Joseph Hone, who weaves a breathless, galloping intrigue packed with narrative twists and sumptuous evocations of Europe’s forgotten past.

The Sixth Directorate (1975) was the second of Joseph Hone's quartet of 'Peter Marlow' spy novels, all now reissued as Faber Finds.In prison his name had been Marlow. When British Intelligence released him to impersonate a dangerous KGB agent, he became George Graham, a man with an incredible past and a highly questionable future. But even the British didn't know everything about Graham, as Marlow discovered. Then he came face-to-face with Graham's mistress and thought the game was up. But it was just beginning ...'Intelligent, sharp and deviously plotted ... Here is a new force in the field of spy stories.' Daily Telegraph'One of the best suspense novels of the last ten years. It has elegance, wit, sympathy, irony, surprise, action, a rueful love affair and a melancholy 'Decline of the West' mood.' New York Times