A Shadow Intelligence
an utterly unputdownable spy thriller
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'Oliver Harris is always pure quality and I'm loving the hell out of his foray into the contemporary spy novel' Ian Rankin
'Scary if true, or even half true' Sunday Times star pick
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...
Readers say:
'Damn, Harris knows what he is talking about, and damn if he doesn't stream that knowledge hard and fast through a sniper's ricocheting trickshot of a plot' five star reader review
'I love the geopolitical skullduggery, the contemporary Great Game ... and it does feel contemporary. It puts espionage solidly in the digital world without losing the essence - people on the ground' five star reader review
'Up there with LeCarre in my view. I'll get everything he's written now' five star reader review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This dark, convoluted spy thriller from Harris (the Nick Belsey detective series) takes MI6 operative Elliot Kane, who has spent most of his career in the Middle East running missions that rarely appear on the public radar, to the sprawling former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, where agent Joanna Lake, a colleague and lover, has gone missing. What he believes will be a simple search in the capitol city of Astana quickly disintegrates into a messy endeavor involving oil companies, private security firms, corrupt politics, and psychological warfare. His undercover quest forces Kane, who's schooled in personal deception and secrecy, to reveal what he values most: his identity as an MI6 agent. Stunning bursts of violence, restrained glimpses into the world of spycraft, and lean, savvy dialogue, however, are all too often lost amid complex plot twists and an ever-increasing cast. A deflating ending doesn't help. Still, Harris shows enough potential to suggest he can more than hold his own in the espionage genre.
Customer Reviews
Our man in Astana
3.5 stars
Established British crime novelist tries his hand at spy fiction.
Our man in the Middle East is recalled because the wheels fell off, the money ran out, the powers that be changed their minds, or some combination thereof. No one tells him exactly, but he receives coded messages that suggest he's in danger, though not from what. He also finds that his old flame, another spy, is missing. The action moves to Kazakhstan, stuff happens, quite confusing stuff. The whereabouts of the old GF remain uncertain, but her viability as a living human is clear. (She's a dead parrot). Resolution occurs, sort of.
The hero is an updated version of George Smiley operating in a contemporary setting. The author has done a good job paying homage to the master, but how highly you rate this book will depend a lot on how much of a Le Carre fan you are. (I'm a lukewarm one at best.)