SEABIRD NINE. By James McVean.

1981 1st US edition. 8vo (141 x 229mm). Pp316. Not illustrated. Blue cloth-backed paper-covered boards, spine titled in gilt.

"The Gyr is the lord of the Arctic. The largest, fastest and fiercest of all the falcon species, it reigns unchallenged, the most deadly and efficient hunter of the loneliest area on Earth. But the great white Gyrfalcon in Jamie Douglas' hands was no hunter now, but a pathetic, enfeebled, dying victim - of what? Jamie Douglas, deeply immersed in research into the vast and mysterious lemming colonies of the stark barrens of northern Scandinavia, had stumbled by accident on evidence of a devastating plague brewing in this remote area. His efforts to track it down involved a beautiful young Basque girl from Canada, an embittered scientist from Belgium, the royal falconer from Kuwait - and Reimen Lance, a giant multi-national chemical combine intent on stopping him at any cost. For the disaster incubating in the northern tundra was no natural scourge. And both politics and business insisted that its secret, the deadly mystery of Seabird Nine, be suppressed as fast and as completely as possible. An epic thriller of human greed and bureaucratic bungling, of selfless toil and almost religious dedication, of subtle manoeuvre and violent action, Seabird Nine is also a remarkable evocation of a superb environment and the arresting creatures that inhabit it, above all, the majestic Gyr". James McVean was the pen-name of Nicholas Luard.