A Shadow Intelligence

By: Oliver Harris

Narrated by: James Langton

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2020

“Thought-provoking...there’s certainly more than enough sharp writing and provocative content in this initial adventure to justify a sequel.”
—Wall Street Journal

There is a dark side to MI6 that needs men like Elliot Kane—volatile, inquisitive, free-floating—in the field. They take them and put two years and over £100k into their training, showing them how to steal cars, strip weapons, and hack bank accounts. There are courses on the use of blackmail and improvised explosives, and entire workshops solely dedicated to navigating by the stars. But no one tells them how to go home.

Kane has spent fifteen years managing events overseas that never make the papers. He is a ghost in his own life, assuming and shedding personalities as each new cover story comes into play. But when the woman he loves, another operative named Joanna Lake, vanishes without a trace in Kazakhstan, he is forced center stage in his own life.

Drawn ever deeper into a realm of deception and conflicting agendas, Kane moves from merely infiltrating events to steering them. While he's well-versed in modern psychological warfare, snowbound Kazakhstan presents unique challenges—poised between China, Russia, and the West, dictatorship and democracy, state intelligence and an increasingly powerful world of private agencies, it’s impossible to work out who is manipulating whom. And Kane’s not the only one trying to figure out where Joanna Lake has gone or what she learned before disappearing.

Author forgot one thing

While plot was reasonably interesting, the author forgot to make you care about the characters. The relationship between the two main characters isn’t even remotely satisfying or credible. The narrator spends the whole book looking for a woman he “loves”? Pass this one up and read his much better Ascension.

A Great Diversion

Fast moving and gripping story that does not fail to surprise. The setting of central Asian intrigue is fascinating and refreshing. A joy

Like a ten hour root canal without anesthesia

What started out as a possible interesting plot became a litany of the author’s attempt to impress the reader with his vast knowledge the geography ,minutiae and a host of characters rivaling a Dostoyevsky novel. If you want a spy novel read Le Carre