Alistair MacLean · 1983 · thriller

Alistair MacLean's 1983 thriller. A group calling itself the FFF blows a hole in a Dutch dyke to demonstrate that it can, and then makes its demands: a quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level, and the government has days to decide how much of it it is prepared to lose. Two Amsterdam detectives are given the case and no useful powers.

1. 1
   Schiphol

   The first demonstration floods the polder around Schiphol, an airport built on a drained lake and sitting metres below the sea - and the point is made without a single casualty, which is precisely what makes it credible.

2. 2
   Amsterdam

   In Amsterdam, detectives van Effen and de Graaf work a case in which the criminals have the whole country as a hostage - and where the only way in is to get somebody inside a group that vets its recruits very carefully indeed.

3. 3
   The Texel dyke

   The real threat is to the great sea defences of the north, where a breach would put water across provinces rather than fields - and the endgame is played out on the dykes with the tide doing the arithmetic for both sides.