Outlaws are Optional: Book IV of the Cruickshank Chronicles

As CEO of the world's most successful outlaw band, Don Orlando should be laughing all the way to the bank, but he's not laughing today. An exiled duke, complete with toadies, minstrels and huntsmen has set up camp in the forest, just a short ride from outlaw headquarters, and that's the sort of thing that plays hell with the asset-redistribution business. And the busy seasons just about to begin. In desperation, Orlando turns to Mission Implausible, Albion's premier adventure team. It's true that their appetite for beer and gratuitous violence is notoriously insatiable and it's also true that Andrew Cruickshank, their mage, combines the efficiency of the postal service, the predictability of the weather and the destructive potential of a strategic nuclear weapon, but hell, what have you got to lose? Quite a bit, actually.

While Cruickshank studies the Shakespeare play As You Like It for clues on how to get rid of exiled dukes, his Designated Opposite, the black mage Montmorency arrives on the scene and begins to start stirring things up. As if that were not enough, Titus Handcarte, the First Speaker of East Castellian, wants to put Don Orlando out of business by establishing a Rural Roistering Experience in the outlaws forest and has persuaded usurping Duke Roger to spearhead this operation.

Things do not look good for Don Orlando, caught between an exiled duke on one side, and a usurping duke backed by East Castellians army on the other. But Mission Implausible is up to the challenge. They can, and do, call upon gratuitous violence, improbable disguises, forgery, blackmail, dubious transvestite rituals, shameless piracy of Shakespearean plots and occult incompetence. Handcarte, usurping Duke Roger and exiled Duke Frederick don't stand a chance, especially when Montmorency is persuaded to lend his formidable occult and diplomatic skills.