A shadow intelligence

Review by Booklist Review

Harris switches gears here, moving from bent London cop Nick Belsey (The House of Fame, 2017) to burned-out MI6 agent Elliot Kane, who has too many cover identities and no real self. That changes when he receives a cryptic message from fellow agent and onetime lover Joanna Lake, who implies she's in serious danger. Elliot is on the go, as himself this time; the trail takes him to desolate but oil-rich Kazakhstan, which shares borders with both Russia and China, and where Joanna was last seen, in deep cover herself, apparently fighting a digital war based on "psyops," a war where "the battlefield is the mind," and the goal is "feeding an opponent specifically prepared information so they make a decision of your choosing." This is fascinating stuff, with obvious connections to the headlines of the day, but all the keyboard pounding by Eliot and others gets a bit abstruse; still, there is a dynamite finale, in which bytes morph into bombs, and a tragic love story in which the lovers, like so many spies before them, can't come in from the cold.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Co. (Apr.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

After three notable crime novels featuring morally compromised detective Nick Belsey (most recently The House of Fame), British author Harris tries his hand at the spy genre, featuring a morally compromised double--possibly triple--agent. Elliot Kane, who possesses less James Bond suavity and more George Smiley world-weariness, has changed identities and cover stories so often that when MI6 suddenly removes him from a botched operation to civilian life, he doesn't know how to adjust. Before long, Elliot becomes ensnared in a mystery that will send him off the grid to Kazakhstan: uncovering the whereabouts of fellow agent and one-time lover Joanna Lake. What he discovers about Joanna's reason for being in this landlocked country perched precariously between China and Russia puts him in play with several competing intelligence organizations both national and private. The narrative is dense, and juggling the various plots and identities can be tough. Still, this is a thoroughly modern, sophisticated espionage novel for the 21st century, concerned with data encryption and the dark web, AI-generated deep fakes, and up-to-date Central Asian geopolitics. VERDICT Recommended for fans of Olen Steinhauer's spy novels and Terry Hayes's I Am Pilgrim.--Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

When his lover and fellow spy Joanna Lake disappears in Kazakhstan, free-floating operative Elliot Kane slips away from his MI6 bosses to go after her, unaware of new dangers in the post-Soviet republic.Kane hasn't seen Joanna in six months when he receives a coded warning from her. She had been working on psy-ops in an ultrasecret intelligence division in England but was eased out for troubling reasons. She was last seen in the Kazakhstan city of Astana, where she was said to be active as a human rights journalist under the name Vanessa McDonald. A man of many aliases, Kane slips into several of them in the process of collecting information from intelligence sources and corporate and government connections. At the core of the story is the coldblooded campaign for control of Kazakhstan's vast quantity of natural oil. Another battle is being fought between Kazakh nationalists and citizens under the sway of a sophisticated Russian disinformation campaign. Harris, acclaimed for detective thrillers including The Hollow Man (2011) and The House of Fame (2016), makes a masterful entry into spy fiction. This may be the deepest a contemporary spy novel has penetrated the cold new world of dark web intelligence and cellphone surveillance and the intellectual as well as pragmatic life of a spook "who existed because of the things the government wasn't allowed to do." At the same time, the frozen landscape asserts itself in a profound way, never more than when Kane is speeding across the salt flats on his way to the worst possible dead end. There's a lot to absorb in this book of many names and associations, but the reader's commitment is amply rewarded.An absorbing, superbly written novel likely to stand as one of the best spy novels of the year. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 The Secret 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 improvised explosives, two workshops 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.   You're marching through the bowels of Tripoli's Ain Zara Prison on Thursday; Saturday night you're at a dinner party in Holland Park. Cutlery tinkles. There is something you've forgotten. You lock yourself in the bathroom and call a restaurant on Martyrs' Square to hear a particular woman's voice and when the phone's answered there is automatic gunfire in the distance. The world cannot all be real at the same time. You apologize to your hosts as you leave, blaming jet lag, then sit on the Central line hearing mourners wail. After the first few times, officers switch to a desk-based role or they find ways of managing the transition. I can't do desks, so I had to learn.   I accumulated rituals, which veered in status between superstition and procedure. A lot of these involved returning to particular places--ones that I could touch as if they were charms and say: everything's under control, you're here again. The Premier Bar in Jordan's Queen Alia airport was a favorite. Travel between the lucky and unlucky parts of the world regularly enough and you'll find yourself killing time in Queen Alia. It was one of the twenty-first century's great crossroads. The Premier Bar tucked itself away in a corner of the main terminal, a fridge and three aluminum tables, with a clear view across the departures hall. It had Arabic news on a flatscreen TV and bottles of Heineken in a fridge. I thought of it as my local pub.   On this occasion, I was on my way from Saudi Arabia to London, with strict instructions not to stop until I was on English soil. This in itself was ominous--most of my debriefs were held in third countries. My operation had been pulled suddenly. I had one bag and the clothes I wore, which I was starting to realize stank of smoke and petrol. The pale jacket and chinos of a certain type of Englishman abroad are not made for arson.   I sipped a beer and tried to unwind, letting the adrenaline seep out, enjoying globalization at its transient best. A Congolese family in green and purple robes filtered through a charcoal-gray swarm of Chinese businessmen. Two dazzling white sheikhs led faceless wives in gold-trimmed burkas. Eastern European sex workers pulled Samsonite cases, heading to the Gulf, Southeast Asian ones in denim cutoffs on their way to Europe. The skinny, bright-eyed Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan laborers clutched mobile phones and scanned the departure boards. Staff of NGOs and media organizations sipped water, restless or exhausted depending on the direction of travel. I watched to see who responded as flights were called: Erbil, Jeddah, Khartoum. There were other solitary individuals like myself, traveling between identities, meeting each other's eyes but not for long. You found a lot of snapped SIM cards in the bins. Private security contractors favored duffel bags. They looked well-fed, and walked with the stiff swagger of men who'd been heavily armed until recently.   I could have done with some of them earlier today, I thought. Six hours ago I'd been in an abandoned mansion on the edge of Asir in Saudi Arabia, close to the border with Yemen. The mansion had been trashed. The previous night a local group of unknown affiliation stormed the place, looting what they could on the pretext of combatting decadence. The occupant--a notorious playboy, discreet funder of terrorism, and precious agent of mine--​had fled. I now knew he'd been arrested by the time I got there. At that moment, all I'd been told was that I had ten minutes to clear the place of anything sensitive before a more purposeful crew arrived.   I walked through with an empty rucksack, my footsteps echoing as I seaprched. I'd been inside once at a party, two years ago, amid crowds of prostitutes and coked-up Saudi royalty. I hadn't been memorizing the layout. It was a fifteen-bedroom, thirty-million-dollar palace: fun to trash, difficult to search. Crystal teardrops from the chandeliers littered the floor among balls from an antique snooker table. There were scattered books, broken glass, trails of blood where the intruders had cut themselves climbing through windows. They'd shot his pets, ransacked his wardrobe, slashed some dubious abstract art and one haunting Fantin-Latour still life. A single word of spray-painted Arabic livened the wallpaper: Irhal . Leave.   Which was good advice.   "Are you seeing this?" a voice in my earpiece asked. Excerpted from A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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