Paths of Courage

Paths of Courage breaks away from the confines of many modern espionage novels, which are often centred around European and Middle Eastern cities, bringing the danger, drama and action across the world to North Korea and into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

The story follows British Intelligence, who use their spy networks in Seoul and Moscow to establish that the North Koreans are manufacturing a lethal super virus. They also learn of a planned attack on a major western city, to be carried out by terrorists using a hijacked Russian nuclear submarine. Are these two strands of intelligence linked?

MI6 send a small team of specialists into North Korea with orders to verify if a virus does exist. Led by Frank Ryder, an ex-SAS operative, who is accompanied by Dr. Grace Seymour, an army virologist, the team search the remote central highlands to find the manufacturing facility.

Meanwhile, the British Navy’s ‘state-of-the-art’ nuclear submarine, HMS Ambush, is ordered to find and destroy the hijacked Russian submarine. The crew must endure weeks of cat-and-mouse searching, but will they succeed in finding the rogue submarine before a missile and its deadly warhead are unleashed towards an unsuspecting city?

Mike Woodhams’ novel was inspired by the controntation between nations. “My travels opened my eyes to the darker side of human nature and to the frailness of our existence, in particular the greed and selfishness of many of the leading nations,” he explains. “I wanted to create a simplistic theme that was objective, brutal, realistic and in context with the modern world.”