The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a bit of a problem: Willie Winkle, a suspected bank robber and murderer is coming up to the Statute of Limitations, beyond which he cannot be tried. Very belatedly, with only one month to go and a very limited budget, action is taken - the Colonel is called in.
Winkle has established an economic empire in the distant and impoverished Lao People's Democratic Republic, one of the few remaining communist states and one that has no extradition agreement with the UK. In his power play with Winkle the Colonel accrues a very disparate and somewhat desperate crew of allies. All in the course of duty, the Colonel participates in Winkle's orgies, hunts for the lost crown jewels, falls in love, and temporarily allies his extraordinary talents with an evangelical ex-SAS Saviour and his consort, the Black Princess, a contender for the lost throne of Laos. As betrayals and alliances propel the plot into an irreverent romp through the darker side of the human imagination, coups and coups within coups set the scene for the final battle royal, in which the Colonel resolves the Winkle problem, and, by the way, saves the Lao PDR.
Like the first in this series, Red Fox Goose Green, the quixotic retired Colonel sets out to right the wrongs of the world. His chronographer, Robert Fox, has a style that reviewers have likened to Tom Sharpe and Terry Southern. The situations and characters of Red Flag are in the best traditions of English farce, served up with a large twist of black ghetto humour: very much on the fringe, and at times on the brink.