Frederick Danner

Some time in the future, East and West have stopped maintaining standing armies and nuclear weapons. Instead, to settle their differences they pit different teams of crack combat specialists against each other.

Britain's biggest pop singer, Steven Shorter, receives unwavering adulation and possesses total control over his rabid fans, which includes nearly the entire population. Yet Shorter is not an autonomous performer -- he is little more than a puppet for the government, promoting whatever agenda they see fit. When a beautiful artist, Vanessa Ritchie, is commissioned to paint his portrait, she pushes Shorter to question his obedience to his manipulative handlers.

Barbara is an assertive, clever, liberated woman, her own boss. Who'd think she could be swept off her feet by a handsome stranger for whom she'd give up her career, London, everything? Especially as her new husband maybe wants to kill her.

In Notting Hill's jazz club, coffee bar and bedsit land of the early 1960s, Joe Beckett is a young unemployed misfit and drifter whose life takes a turn for the worse when he encounters Richard Dyce, an ex-army officer.