Chief Inspector Alex Stirling, an officer in the Metropolitan Police’s Arts and Antiques Unit, receives an urgent late-night phone call at his flat in London: Ivan Macek, a Croatian Holocaust survivor and Nazi-hunter, has been murdered at Tyburn Convent. A gold bar found next to the body apparently links the crime to the Ustashi, a long-thought dead Croatian nationalist movement.

Matea Kovacic, Macek’s granddaughter and a conservationist at the British Museum, explains that Macek had been investigating the disappearance of the entire Croatian Treasury at the end of the Second World War. He had made a breakthrough, which she believes cost him his life.

Macek’s theory that the Treasury was illicitly transferred to the Vatican Bank by a fascist religious order, Solano, is in doubt following his death, as communications intercepted by MI5 suggest that the Treasury was actually stolen by Bosnian Islamic fundamentalists who have brought it to London to fund a terrorist atrocity.

Matea persuades Stirling that the real threat is Solano, and that they must identify and apprehend the London-based members of Solano if her grandfather’s murderer is to be caught and a regional conflict in the Balkans to be avoided. As they embark on their search across London, the mysterious Solano leader Zlatar deploys a ruthless assassin, Miroslav, to stop them.

Solano is Mark Adams’ debut novel. Mark is a fan of thrillers and hopes that the political intrigue and betrayal within Solano is a match for John Le Carre. Like the author Lee Child, Mark is a law graduate of the University of Sheffield. He lives and works in London.