The next three novels, "Night Over Water" (1991), "A Dangerous Fortune" (1993) and "A Place Called Freedom" (1995) were more historical than thriller, but he returned to the thriller genre with "The Third Twin" (1996) which in the "Publishing Trends" annual survey of international fiction best-sellers for 1997 was ranked no. 2 worldwide, after John Grisham's "The Partner". His next work, "The Hammer of Eden" (1998), was another contemporary suspense story followed by a Cold War thriller, "Code to Zero" (2000).