In one of those happy coincidences, I was attracted to a previously unknown author's book by its cover artwork, only to find out out it was actually a pen name used by an established and well-known writer.

Breakout is a thriller published in 1986 in the UK by Grafton Books. The author is Oliver Jacks, who I'd not had any previous experience of reading. Some light internet research didn't surface much of a backlog. A few other thriller/action adventure tales in the 70's and 80's but nothing outstanding or particularly well-known. It seemed that Mr Jacks penned another four books (Man on a Short Leash, Assassination Day and Autumn Heroes) but had disappeared by the nineties. Jacks doesn't have much of a presence on the internet and doesn't even have a page dedicated to him on Fantastic Fiction.

However, after finishing the story, I persevered in my studies and started to notice something. Along with Jacks name I noticed a listing that coupled one of his books with the name Kenneth Royce. This rang a bell and a quick reference back to the Appendix of Mike Ripley's excellent Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang confirmed that indeed Oliver Jacks was a name used by thriller writer Kenneth Royce. It seemed I had inadvertently landed the final Jacks book in his quartet of standalone tales.

Royce was born in 1920 in Croydon, UK. He served in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War, raising to the rank of Captain. After the war he became involved in running a travel agency which afforded him the perfect position to conduct research on the background to his many books. It was with the Spider Scott series that he rose to fame. Spider is an ex-burglar who can't quite give up the temptations of crime and who is recruited to work for the secret services. Scott became known as the XYY Man due to his extra 'Y' chromosome giving him a pre-disposition towards criminality.