About The Book

Internationally bestselling author Robert Goddard has been called “a master of the sly double- and triple-cross” (Seattle Times). In the third installment of the James Maxted thriller series, starring a dashing Royal Flying Corps veteran turned secret service operative, the truth about allegiances has never been less certain.

The Treaty of Versailles has finally been signed, officially ending the World War I peace negotiations, and the action shifts east, to Tokyo, where a team assembled at Max’s behest anxiously awaits his arrival on the docks. Max had arrived in Paris soon after the end of the Great War to investigate the suspicious death of his father, a British diplomat named Sir Henry, and was soon plunged into a treacherous game of cat and mouse with the people behind his father’s death: German spymaster Fritz Lemmer and the dark horse of the Japanese diplomatic contingent, Count Tomura. It is in Japan, where Sir Henry worked as a young government agent, that Max hopes to finally uncover the whole truth behind his father’s murder and take down Lemmer’s spy network once and for all. But what Max’s cohort doesn’t know is that his own story line seems to have come to an end in France. Stuck in limbo, the team decides to pursue their only lead—right into Lemmer’s den.

Loaded with death threats, knife fights, a kidnapping or two, and a coded list that has the power to dismantle whole governmental hierarchies, The Ends of the Earth is a masterful work of historical cut-and-thrust that tests the bonds of family and country to their very limit.

Praise

“The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons in the climax of this post-WWI historical thriller series by Goddard. After teasing readers with cliffhangers in The Ways of the World and The Corners of the Globe, Goddard finally makes good by unraveling the mysteries that perplexed his flying ace-turned-spy, James ‘Max’ Maxted . . . Goddard has crafted a thrilling entry to tie up most of his loose ends . . . The third and most satisfying entry in an excellent series of old-school spy thrillers.” —Kirkus Reviews

Excerpt

Max felt the barrel of the gun pressing into his temple and his index finger being folded round the trigger.

He had always feared dying in a flying accident, as too many RFC pilots had, rather than in combat. It would have been both stupid and futile, a waste of his life as well as a good aeroplane. What was about to happen to him was similar in its unfittingness—and in the shame he felt on account of it. He had failed. He had fallen short. He had made a fatal mistake.

It could not be helped. At least, as when things went disastrously wrong in the air, it would end quickly. There was that to be said for it at any rate.

“We are ready, yes?” Pierre Dombreux nodded in evident satisfaction with his handiwork, then drew back and grimaced as he began to squeeze Max’s finger against the trigger. “Adieu,” he murmured.

A click sounded in Max’s ear. Then—