A Shadow Intelligence

A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris reflects the dark side of MI6. Elliot Kane is the instrument of an agency that invests two years and over £100K into training recruits to steal cars, hack bank accounts, strip weapons, and employ everything from blackmail to improvised explosives in service of Crown and Country. After fifteen years overseas embroiled in events that never make the news, Kane is a ghost in his own life, assuming and shedding personalities with each new cover story.

When the woman he loves, another operative named Joanna Lake, vanishes in Kazakhstan, she leaves behind an astonishing video of Kane in a room he's never entered—sending Kane off the rails to find her. While he is well versed in modern psychological warfare, the snowbound, landlocked terrain presents unique challenges. In a country poised between China, Russia, and the West, between dictatorship and democracy, between state intelligence and increasingly powerful private corporations, it becomes impossible to determine who is manipulating whom. Drawn ever deeper into a realm of deception and conflicting agendas, Kane moves from merely spying to steering the action. But Kane is not the only one trying to figure out where Joanna Lake has gone, or what she learned before disappearing.

"Sharp writing and provocative content." --Wall Street Journal
"Elegant and compulsive." --Ian Rankin