The author’s Nick Belsey books are among my favourites and so when I was searching for books I chose this. Altogether different, but also fast paced and well written, it is a modern spy story with so many characters belonging to different factions it is sometimes hard to know who is who and what is happening.

Excellent modern tale of a spy on the trail of his lost love, who finds himself caught in an oil rights debate in Kazakhstan that is threatening to blow up into world war three. We are always unsure who we can trust until the thrilling last sequence.

It’s no surprise that Oliver Harris has been compared to Le Carré because this is a really excellent spy thriller, that’s chilling and exciting in equal measure. M16 spy, Elliot Kane, is pulled from an operation in Saudi Arabia and brought home under something of a cloud, although he doesn’t know why. He discovers his on-off girlfriend, Joanna, (also MI6) is missing but has sent him a warning that he’s in danger. No-one knows where Joanna is or what she’s been working on, so Kane eludes his minders and heads to Kazakhstan, her last known location. As he searches for her that country teeters on the brink of a political uprising, caught between Russia, China and the West. The story lays bare the ways news can be manipulated and controlled, and everything from the plot to the characters feels entirely real. I couldn’t put it down! Cornish Eskimo (Oundle Crime)