Night Heron

Set in China, and ripped from today's headlines, comes a pulse-pounding debut that reinvents the spy thriller for the 21st century.

A lone man, Peanut, escapes a labor camp in the dead of night, fleeing across the winter desert of north-west China.

Two decades earlier, he was a spy for the British; now Peanut must disappear on Beijing's surveillance-blanketed streets. Desperate and ruthless, he reaches out to his one-time MI6 paymasters via crusading journalist Philip Mangan, offering military secrets in return for extraction.

But the secrets prove more valuable than Peanut or Mangan could ever have known. . . and not only to the British.

Adam Brookes was for many years a journalist and foreign correspondent for BBC News. He reported from China, Indonesia, the US and many other countries, Iraq and Afghanistan among them. His debut novel, Night Heron, was nominated for the 2014 CWA John Creasey Dagger and appeared on best of the year lists in the TLS, Kirkus and NPR; its follow-up Spy Games was nominated for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. The Spy's Daughter is his third novel. He lives with his family in Takoma Park, Maryland.