The Master Submariner has finally surfaced. Patrick Robinson, who wrote a dazzling series of best sellers about submarine warfare (guided by ex-Royal Navy Underwater Chief and Falklands War Battle Group Commander, Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward) has written his first book in five years, Maidens In The Vale.

It’s a page-turning thriller about revenge, murder on an international scale, posing the electrifying modern question - can a young woman be so shockingly abused, that any action she subsequently takes is justified? She’s beautiful, young, expensively educated in England, although Russian by birth and heritage. But her uncle, her mum’s brother, is an ex-KGB assassin. He’s a ‘diplomat’ now, based in London. He and his niece make a fire-proof and vengeful combination - driving international Police Forces almost crazy with frustration.

Robinson’s areas of some expertise include horseracing, boxing, rowing, Special Forces, and military thrillers, including residents of the Lubyanka, Uncle Rudy’s home base in Moscow. He also knows a thing or two about London’s aristocracy (he was once a much-feared writer on the legendary William Hickey Society Column, Daily Express), It’s all woven into this complex story, and it’s marginally held in place by the most unlikely romance - when the Scotland Yard Superintendent is utterly captivated by his possible prime suspect. Meanwhile, his own mother, the daughter of a Scottish Duke, nearly steals the show, as a droll and irreverent matriarch, like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. The book will keep you guessing to the very last page, as it deals with a devastating High Court ‘crime’ which dare not speak its name.