Hard Knocks			Click book cover    for larger image
				Piatkus Books UK Hardback Mar 2003 Paperback Feb 2004

Hard Knocks is the third book in the Charlie Fox series . . .

'Perhaps if the army had known what was inside me, what I would eventually turn into, they might not have been so keen to let me go.'

Hard Knocks finds Charlie Fox in Germany, fighting for her life in book three in the series.

Charlie really didn't care who shot dead her traitorous ex-army comrade Kirk Salter during a bodyguard training course in Germany. But when old flame Sean Meyer asks her to go undercover at Major Gilby's elite school and find out what happened to Kirk she just can't bring herself to refuse.

Keeping her nerve isn't easy when events bring back fears and memories she's worked so hard to forget. It's clear there are secrets at Einsbaden Manor that people are willing to kill to conceal. Some of the students on this particular course seem to have more on their minds than simply learning about close protection. Subjects like revenge, and murder. And what's the connection between the school and the recent spate of vicious kidnappings that have left a trail of bodies halfway across Europe?

To find out what's going on, Charlie must face up to her past and move quickly before she becomes the next casualty. She expected training to be tough, but can she graduate from this school of hard knocks alive?

From the author's notebook

This was another of those creepy coincidences. Hard Knocks involves eastern European gangsters kidnapping the children of the rich. A month after I'd finished it, a group of Albanians were exposed plotting to kidnap David and Victoria Beckham's two young children. This is starting to get spooky . . .

The handguns used at the bodyguard training school in the book are Sig Sauer P226s, so I made sure that I had the chance to fire one on a recent trip to the States. I discovered at this point that it's a really bad idea to wear an open-neck shirt while you're standing on a shooting range to the right of someone firing a semiautomatic handgun with a right-hand eject mechanism. The first time he fired, his gun spat a hot shell casing straight down the front of my shirt. That spoils your aim, I can tell you!

Hard Knocks has been bought by the Mystery Thriller Book Club