The rules of the game are changing, and the winner takes all... Two superpowers must ponder their next move over Europe's ballistic-missile chessboard in the face of the worst threat to world peace since the Cuban missile crisis. This threat is brandished by the maverick statesman holding sway over the Elysee Palace - Henri Fouquet. France's new Napoleon stands prepared to imperil the entire northern hemisphere with his grand designs for a new world order by changing the rules of the game to nuclear poker. Englishman Henry Wright is unwittingly drawn into this incendiary setting after signing up with a US intelligence-gathering agency. Bewitched by Alexy Geary, the agency's persuasive Senior Vice-President, whilst also suspicious of her motives and mistrustful of the enigmatic organisation behind her, man-in-the-middle Henry is soon entangled in a web of violence and intrigue. Alexy Geary's challenge is to defuse the situation before the Soviet Union seizes upon French brinkmanship as a pretext for sparking off World War III - or the Pentagon unleashes its 'Star Wars' laser technology. With the stakes this high, all that stands in the way of mutual assured destruction is Henry Wright, an unassuming interpreter caught up in an epic predicament... The Man with A Charmed Life is a gripping political thriller, set in the pre-Gorbachev Cold War era, featuring flawed, flesh-and-blood mortals, far removed from the carbon-copy heroes and villains that already populate the literary world."