IF you're going to pen a novel about piracy and intrigue in the Far East, theft of nuclear secrets in the US, cops in Australia and the intricacies of ocean sailing, then it helps to have seen a fair bit of the world.

No problem for Adrian Flanagan. Though just 41, he seems to have already had enough experiences for several average lifetimes.

They include early years in Kenya followed by homes in Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand, Jesuit boarding school in England, two years of medical training in London, travel in India and Sri Lanka, training with the Parachute Regiment. Then study to become an osteopath, a motorbike injury which ruined his chances of practising, launching a successful business, and long experience of international yachting.

It's all proved a rich source of ideas and images for his newly-published debut novel, Cobra.

Adrian says: "I have so much visual material in my head, so much tape on the floor, I just pick subconsciously from it all."

Adrian moved from London to Chinnor earlier this year with his wife Louise and two-year-old son Benjamin and is already plotting a new novel. But first he's basking in the pleasure of his first published book after 16 years of writing effort, all done in between the other careers he's packed in.

He describes Cobra as a fast-paced plot-driven thriller. The action is multi-layered. Simon McGovern hears his parents have been murdered on their yacht and receives an ancient legacy: a route map to buried treasure. He teams up with Alan Bedale, an Australian specialist in piracy crime.

Meanwhile the FBI is plunged into a desperate race to track down the perpetrators of a catastrophic security breach.

In Indonesia a former US Marine is running a violent gang of pirates and looters.

All the strands weave together in an exciting plot that takes the reader across the world and back to resolve the mystery.

It's more than a fast action story. Adrian captures the atmosphere of each place.

His wife Louise, who helped with the research and editing, says: "He has smelt so many smells, tasted so many tastes, seen so many places, and it all comes out in the book."

Even the whiff of danger seems palpable, perhaps because he's been there himself.

Back in 1982 in Sri Lanka a bomb planted by Tamil Tigers went off in the government guesthouse where he had been sitting just half an hour earlier, killing 13.

Further depth comes from Adrian's creation of vivid word images, reflecting his earlier love of writing poetry.

All writers believe in research. But Adrian pursues it with more zeal than most. A comment by his uncle, while they sat in a bar back in 1982, that the imminent Falklands War looked to him like a fabricated event for political ends gave him the idea for his first unpublished novel, The Falklands Goose.

"It was a fictional account but based in researched fact.

"The reason I joined the army was that my main character had to be a military guy. After a year at Sandhurst, rather than take up a commission, I switched to osteopathy.

"But the writing bug had taken hold."

Two near misses with novels which were considered seriously by publishers but didn't stick did, he feel, help refine his writing technique.

Now his approach to writing is well thought out.

"You need an original premise. With Cobra, it was latterday pirates. I knew it was a real problem because I'd often read reports about it in the South China Morning Post, but few people know anything about it.

"I spent a month thinking about it. It's like throwing dust in the air and letting a pattern settle.

"Then I worked out the main plot line, and to give it interest added other subplots which cross and recross it to give interest, location, new characters, pace and variation to the story.

"To add scale to the book, I brought in the factual story of the theft of nuclear secrets in the US. Introducing known facts helps the reader suspend disbelief.

"Then I started gathering research, created character plans, and worked out the right balance of dialogue and narrative. You can't go at breakneck speed all the time or the reader gets breathless. It must speed up and slow down. I could create a graph to show the speed it's working at."

The first draft took six months, then the following year saw eight rewrites, resulting in a tale that's packed with colour and action.

Now settled in a big old house in Chinnor which needs plenty of attention, busy as a consultant to the British College of Osteopathy, writing for a business magazine and enjoying the thrill of signing copies of his book, Adrian is also contemplating his next novel. "It's at the stage where I've thrown the dust into the air and I'm waiting to see what happens."

Cobra, by Adrian Flanagan (published by Robert Hale), hardback £17.99, available from local bookshops