Need to Know

When high-flyer Caroline Fanshaw goes skinny-dipping in the hotel pool she has no idea how many eyes are watching her. Her audience includes former Chief Executive and Madame, Melody Bigger. Melody decides Caroline is the ideal honey to entrap Herbert Von Wolfswinkle, eminent banker and German delegate to the European Central Bank. Aided by her accomplice, former car boss Sid Schweinsteiger, Melody lures Caroline into indiscretions with her colleagues and into a peculiar relationship with Von Wolfswinkle, whose pact with severe wife Francine says he can look at young women but not touch. Caroline’s husband Robert, uncovers the plot. But which country is behind the attempt to change the Eurozone’s economic policy? The truth is revealed at a European economic summit sex party in Copenhagen.

Caroline meets an old flame, artist Erik Bellinker. She agrees to pose for Erik for a picture that will be auctioned for charity. Caroline has been searching for her natural mother, and thinks a lifeline has been thrown when Regina Heart gets in touch, claiming to be her birth mother. Regina has founded a pagan cult religion on a Scottish island. Regina has a score to settle; she is determined to destroy Caroline's marriage. Regina persuades Caroline to undertake an initiation into her priesthood at the winter solstice moon ceremony at Castle Dunlaggin. The moon ceremony comes to fiery conclusion when the fraud behind Regina’s religious cult is exposed.

The world is anticipating a thrilling football tournament in Brazil, but Caroline’s business colleagues fear someone is planning to fix the finals. She agrees to infiltrate a Far East betting syndicate, but first she needs to learn how to gamble like a pro. Italian casino owner Prince Lippi gives her a crash course in winning and losing. Caroline discovers the thrill of staking her money, and then her body. But no sooner has she met the suave but dangerous poker-player Mr Nim, than her beginner’s luck runs out. In Singapore, she is sucked into a tornado of mounting losses in the casino and at the racetrack. Has she brilliantly infiltrated the gambling syndicate and uncovered the plot to fix the World Cup, or been tempted by Nim’s offer of wealth and security? She has only until the final whistle in Rio de Janeiro to find out who is really behind the conspiracy; and to come up with the million dollars she needs to buy her freedom from a life of servitude.