This is book 11 of the "Modesty Blaise" series.

This note does not contain major spoilers for the book.

I somehow lost this one for a long time, and then got to rediscover it just a few years ago. That was fun.

This one starts shortly before Modesty wound up The Network, and you get to meet some of the old Network people first-hand. This is used to introduce a character that we then meet many years later. Like a lot of the books, there's a kind of dark overtone; I perceived this growing as the series progressed, but I need to go sort them in order and consider that some more.