Fool's Danegeld

The trouble started when Ben Jameson attended a meeting about the excavation of a Viking fortress in Denmark. While there he examined the plans with Professor Bernard Snead and his glamorous Armenian assistant Zarig Parikian.

Later he woke in a prehistoric burial chamber and crawled out to find shelter with the witchy wife of a local farmer. Then, to his horror, he discovered he had been sharing the tomb with a bloodily dismembered corpse.

Next his assistant Paeony was abducted and dumped on an unambiguously sexual feature of one of the country's best-known hillside figures. Thereafter things became even more bewildering.

Ben had a problem: he could not understand women. Paeony might behave like a tomboy but could assume the elegance of a catwalk model. Zarig Parikian seemed to be an academic groupie yet was endowed with a subtle and calculating mind. And in Denmark Ben was to meet Bodil Kjaer, possibly an undercover cop and porn star. Unknown to Ben each woman was following a separate and devious agenda in which he prominently featured.

The story is set against a background of academic intrigue and shifts from England to the cold countryside of Denmark.  The Vikings and their violent world are never far from the action, nor is the spirit of Sweyn Forkbeard, one of the most ruthless of their leaders.