Exocet

FOREWORD

One of my personal favourite novels. Critics have been kind enough to say that the first chapter, which involves the penetration of Buckingham Palace, is one of the best things of its kind in the modern thriller. The idea for the book came to me during the Falklands conflict when I met arms salesmen at a Jersey cocktail party who had just come in from Paris where, they told me, there was an underground war going on between Argentinean agents trying to buy black market Exocet missiles and members of British Intelligence trying to foil them. I took their word for it and wrote the novel. Some critics thought the idea far-fetched at the time. However, the book was a huge success, mainly because for once I included a strong love affair. In later years, non-fiction books on the conflict have shown that the struggle, as I showed, between Argentinean and British agents did actually take place.

JACK HIGGINS

October 1996