THE FOURTH JON BALL STORY

How can a woman enter Oxford University Press and disappear? It’s as if Penny entered the building and never left. Her friend Kat Joselyn asks Jon Ball and Pete Lovell to find her. Marandellas joins in to make a TV documentary.

But this is 2019, the year between Novichok and Covid, another year of Britain waiting for Brexit. Defence computer experts Sandrine Cashford and Joseph Muscant have their own reasons to help and the search. So does an unemployed cleaner in Wales, a drug dealer’s mother in Yorkshire, an ambitious physics professor at Oxford, a creepy security guard, the lady who teaches underwater demolition to Navy divers, university students, their parents, and of course, Marandellas’ mother Anna at the Ministry of Defense in London.

There are secret meetings in the Blavatnik School of Government, in Army HQ, and in MOD Abbey Wood. There are thugs at motorway service areas, and there are Poets and writers in Salisbury. Is anyone else missing? Is Penny really missing? Who is sending fake emails? Will the MOD stop Scotland becoming independent? Should Oriel put statues of Nehanda and Lobengula on either side of Rhodes? Is the Universe really expanding?

Jon, Pete, and Marandellas find answers.

Under Pressure

by Colwell Hopper