Kilo 17 - Tapa blanda

KILO 17 gives the inside story of a close-knit Customs team during a major drugs investigation. Like all investigations it mixes long and often frustrating bouts of patient observation with exhilarating moments of high-speed action and fear. It is also the story of how the 'Kilo' team's initial hostility to an outsider in their midst turned to acceptance and friendship. As an Oxford-educated, former member of MI6, Harry is promoted straight over the heads of more experienced officers. But with no previous experience of the drugs world, the Kilos think they need Harry like a hole in the head. Traditionally working in a team of 15, the Kilos give him the call-sign number '17', partly out of respect for a colleague killed in the line of duty, partly to make sure Harry knows his place. But Harry sticks at the job and begins to make progress with his investigation into the affairs of Frank Davies, the local Mister Big. And in the long desperate hunt for evidence, involving a transit van smashing through the front window of an Indian restaurant, chance tip-offs, a moonlit search for a missing ex-SAS soldier, a dawn raid on a fortress-like country house and barely legal flights by light aircraft to Holland, the Kilos begin to chip away at Frank Davies's criminal empire.

Harry Ferguson worked with Customs and Excise for eight years and is now a full-time writer.