BOOKS

FREE AGENT 

Simon & Schuster UK and Canada, hardcover

 Simon & Schuster UK and Canada, paperback and ebook

Viking US, hardcover

Penguin US, paperback and ebook

1945: MI6 agent Paul Dark takes part in a top-secret mission to hunt down and execute Nazi war criminals. He will discover that everything he understood about that mission, about its consequences, and about the woman he once loved, has been built on false foundations. 1969: a KGB colonel called Slavin walks into the High Commission in Lagos, Nigeria, and announces that he wants to defect. He has information which indicates that there is yet another double agent within the Service – a devastating blow to an agency still coming to terms with its betrayal by Kim Philby and the rest of the Cambridge Five. Dark has been largely above suspicion during those years of self-recrimination. But now he can see his number coming up. For some it would be fight or flight time. But when you discover that everything you've taken for granted and trusted for twenty-four years is untrue, and when your arrest may only be moments away, then flight and fight may be your only option.

Free Agent is a twisting, intense thriller set between London and Nigeria during the height of the Cold War. It's a novel of innumerable cliffhangers within a constantly evolving moral universe, and it keeps the surprises coming until the very last page.

SONG OF TREASON 

(Initially published in the UK as FREE COUNTRY)

Simon & Schuster UK and Canada, hardcover

Simon & Schuster UK and Canada, paperback and ebook

May 1, 1969: Paul Dark now finds himself a target for both exposure, and assassination. Desperate to escape his predicament, he gambles everything on one last throw of the dice, exposing his Soviet handler to the British. But before long, he finds he has no choice but to go on the run again, and the race is on to stop a deadly conspiracy that dates back to the early years of the Cold War. The second part of the Paul Dark trilogy, Song of Treason is another sweat-soaked Sixties-set spy thriller in the tradition of Len Deighton and Frederick Forsyth. Previously published in hardback and trade paperback under the title Free Country.

THE MOSCOW OPTION 

Simon & Schuster UK and Canada, paperback and ebook

October, 1969: Moscow. Paul Dark is a broken man with nothing for company but the ghosts of his past when he is woken in the early hours and taken to a secret location. There, he discovers that the Soviets believe they are about to face a nuclear attack by the West – and are planning to strike first as a result. Dark realizes at once that the truth of the matter involves the final days of the Second World War, and the final mission he undertook as a loyal British agent. Now the fate of the entire world rests on the shoulders of one man: a traitor long past his best, who is soon the subject of a massive man-hunt in one of the most repressive regimes in history. Dark needs to make it to a small island in the Baltic before it's too late – and the clock is ticking.

THE DARK CHRONICLES 

(omnibus of Free Agent, Song of Treason and The Moscow Option)

Penguin US, paperback and ebook

COMING SOON:

DEAD DROP

In August 1960, a Soviet colonel called Oleg Penkovsky tried to make contact with the West. His first attempt was to approach two American students in Moscow. He handed them a bulky envelope and pleaded with them to deliver it to the American embassy. Inside was an offer to work as a 'soldier-warrior' for the free world. MI6 and the CIA ran Penkovsky jointly, in an operation that ran through the showdown over Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He provided crucial intelligence, including photographs of rocket manuals that helped Kennedy end the Cuba crisis and avert a war. Codenamed HERO, Penkovsky is widely seen as the most important spy of the Cold War, and the CIA-MI6 operation, run as the world stood on the brink of nuclear destruction, has never been bettered. But how exactly did the Russians detect Penkovsky, and why did they let him continue his contact with his handlers for months afterwards? Could it be that the whole Cuban Missile Crisis was part of a Soviet deception operation - and has another betrayal hidden in plain sight all these years? 

Thrilling, evocative and hugely controversial, Dead Drop blows apart the myths surrounding one of the Cold War's greatest spy operations.