The counterffeit king

One ledger. Three nights. No second chances. Thames Barn — gentleman, government troubleshooter, always immaculate in a Savile Row suit — boards the Night Express, the great luxury sleeper running Istanbul to Venice, with a single impossible assignment. Somewhere aboard is the Bosphorus Ledger: a private banker's encrypted record of every bribed official, hidden account, and bought vote across a dozen European capitals. The Argent Circle, a discreet syndicate chaired by the silver-tongued Lucian Vane, means to collect it in Venice and turn it into blackmail leverage over governments themselves. At Barn's side is Trippany Sloane, co-director of the operation and the sharpest signals analyst in the service — running his board from the field, not a desk. Together they chase the ledger from a Bosphorus-side mansion through a car chase across Istanbul, onto the train itself: brass-and-velvet sleeping cars, a white-tablecloth dining car where Trippany matches wits with Vane's security chief, a blackout in a mountain tunnel, a dawn border stop with a high-speed road chase and a breathless reboarding of the moving train. Each night demands a new disguise, a new plan, and a new gadget — and Barn never once loses his nerve or his manners. But in Venice the handover moves to a masked gala in a Grand Canal palazzo, and Vane is always one step ahead. To take the ledger back, Barn must pull off the boldest swap of his career — in evening dress, before a hundred masked guests — and face a man who believes governments are temporary tenants, and he simply collects the rent. The Night Express is the fourth Thames Barn novel: a globe-spanning race against time, full of style, wit, and heart.