Chief Inspector Nigel Cockett could have retired at the age of 55, but like a fool he stayed on for that last promotion that would raise his pension just a little more. Unfortunately, just then a corpse turned up in the holding cell of his own police station. Inspector Manson, his young colleague fresh from police college—the chappy that was supposed to succeed him—seemed to think that he, Nigel, was the culprit. Just because he was the only person who had the key to the lock-up in his possession. “This won’t do at all,” the policeman thought, “I’ve been framed!” So he called his old acquaintance Daisy Hayes on the phone. She was the only real-life sleuth he’d ever met with any talent for solving murders. He begged her to help him prove his innocence: “The only thing I can say for sure is that I didn’t do it!”

While treating a patient in the fall of 1972, Daisy managed to winkle out of him that he worked for MI6. Then she blabbed about a planned visit to East Berlin with her friend Margery, who was a chemistry researcher at King’s College. Back at the office, the man asked his spooks to do some background checks. It turned out that without even knowing it his blind physiotherapist and her chum had an indirect connection to a high-ranking communist party boss… Meanwhile, in East Berlin, clever operatives of the GDR secret services realized that Margery must know some pretty vital scientific secrets. They decided to put Hans Konradi on the case during the visit of the two Englishwomen to Ost. Young Hans was not an agent, just a charming student with fluent English who could easily be pressured into spying for his country. But Hans had an agenda of his own, and ‘Operation Berlin Fall’ did not turn out the way the spymasters on both sides of the Wall had envisioned. “Nick Aaron tries his hand at a spy mystery but the result is more like an unintended comedy with a tragic love story thrown in. Failure can be entertaining, however, and who needs another pompous spy opera?” - The Weekly Banner

Portly showbiz writer Will Benson has left Theatre World for the loucher but less life-threatening environment of soft-porn publishing. Now settled down in connubial bliss with the lovely Kim, life, it seems is a bed of roses. But certain aspects of his marriage necessitate the occasional visit to 'a tart with a heart' in Pimlico . . . and on one such visit Will finds the man ahead of him in the queue has overstepped the mark, to say the least, and Will once again is forced into the role of reluctant private eye . . .