A Shadow Intelligence: an utterly unputdownable spy thriller

Description

'Oliver Harris is always pure quality and I'm loving the hell out of his foray into the contemporary spy novel' Ian Rankin A BRILLIANT NEW ESPIONAGE THRILLER FOR FANS OF JOHN LE CARRE The intelligence service puts two years and over 100k into the training of new field officers. You're shown how to steal cars, strip weapons, hack bank accounts. There are courses on the use of blackmail and improvised explosives, two workshops solely dedicated to navigating by the stars. But nothing about what I had heard one old spy call whiplash. No one tells you how to go home. There is a dark side to MI6 that needs men like Elliot Kane - mercurial, inquisitive, free floating. He's spent fifteen years managing events overseas that never make the papers, deniable and deeply effective. Kane is a ghost in his own life, picking up and dropping personalities as each new cover story comes into play. But when a woman he loves, Joanna Lake, vanishes without a trace in Kazakhstan, he is forced centre stage. Drawn ever deeper into a realm of deception, Kane moves from merely infiltrating events to steering them. He's used to a new mode of hybrid psychological warfare - but snowbound Kazakhstan presents unique challenges. Poised between China, Russia and the West, dictatorship and democracy, state intelligence and an increasingly powerful world of private agencies, it's impossible to work out who is manipulating who. And Kane's not the only one trying to figure out where Joanna Lake has gone or what she learned before disappearing. Unable to trust anyone, hunted by his own colleagues, and with the life of someone he loves at stake, Kane needs to work out who is driving events, and why...

Oliver Harris was born in London but now lives in Manchester. He is the author of the Nick Belsey series of crime novels, plus two novels featuring MI6 officer Elliot Kane. He teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Harris has a terrific sense of place, hurtling between the wealthiest and most-run-down areas of London... The plot unfolds in a chilling and totally unexpected direction - Joan Smith, Sunday Times, praise for The House of Fame Non-stop activity is exhaustingly gripping, and Oliver Harris is punchy and perceptive - Marcel Berlins, The Times, praise for The House of Fame A twisting spiral of lies and corruption, a pitch-perfect portrait of contemporary London and a beguiling bastard of a hero - Val McDermid, praise for The Hollow Man Makes the capital as eerie as Le Carre's Berlin - Evening Standard, praise for Deep Shelter