Jeffrey Archer back with new series

Jeffrey Archer is back, this time not with a detective story but a tale of a detective.

"Nothing Ventured" is the first book of the new William Warwick Series in the style of Archer's bestselling "The Clifton Chronicles".

William is a family man and a detective who will battle throughout his career against a powerful criminal nemesis.

William always wanted to be a detective. Much to his father Sir Julian Warwick QC's dismay, he decides not to become a barrister like him and his sister Grace but join London's Metropolitan Police Force.

After graduating from university, William begins a career that will define his life: from his early months on the beat under the watchful eye of his first mentor, Constable Fred Yates, to his first high-stakes case as a fledgling detective in Scotland Yard's arts and antiquities squad.

Investigating the theft of a priceless Rembrandt painting from the Fitzmolean Museum, he meets Beth Rainsford, a research assistant at the gallery who he falls hopelessly in love with, even as Beth guards a secret of her own that she's terrified will come to light.

While William follows the trail of the missing masterpiece, he comes up against suave art collector Miles Faulkner and his lawyer, Booth Watson QC, who are willing to bend the law to breaking point to stay one step ahead of William.

Meanwhile, Faulkner's wife, Christina, befriends William, but whose side is she really on? "Nothing Ventured", published by Pan Macmillan, seeks to answer that. The book will be out on September 5.

Archer, whose novels and short stories include "Kane and Abel" and "Cat O' Nine Tales" besides the "Clifton Chronicles", was a member of the House of Lords for over a quarter of a century.