Deep in Marxist Guerilla territory a hopeless war is being fought.

The Berlin Wall is demolished. Marx is dead. Try telling that to Ramon and his desperate men hiding in the jungle cradling their AK 47s, dusting off the slabs of Semtex and dreaming of world revolution.

MAMista takes us to the dusty, violent capital of Spanish Guiana in South America, and thence into the depths of the rain forest. There, four people become caught up in a struggle both political and personal, a struggle corrupted by ironies and deceits, and riddled with the accidents of war. They are four people who never should have found themselves bound together in a mission for revolution, which may be the sentence of death.

Never has Deighton portrayed so accurately the terror and the tedium of war, or the shifting alliances and betrayals between people who have nothing to lose but their lives.