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Spies and Other Gods

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What to expect

From a former spy comes an electrifying novel about the mystery, paranoia and ruthlessness of the secretive world of British espionage

'Wonderfully entertaining' John Banville, author of Booker Prize-winning The Sea

'Wolff is the new maestro' Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Head of British Intelligence is having a bad day. Only six months off retirement and Sir William Rentoul is wondering if he'll make it that far, what with the sudden descent of a brain fog dense enough to turn every day into a series of small humiliations.

To make matters worse, Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee - the body that oversees Sir William - has received an anonymous complaint from one of his officers. Sir William dimly recalls accepting that there should be a channel for whistleblowers, but he never expected that they would pick his most sensitive case, one involving an Iranian assassin and a trail of dead bodies, or that the person who turned up to poke their nose into his files should be a lowly parliamentary researcher named Aphra McQueen, who displays smarts, tenacity and rebelliousness in unsettling measures.

Aphra seems to know more about the operation than she is letting on. What will she uncover? What is she really up to? And can she survive the unexpected events that will bounce her from London to Birmingham to Paris to Lausanne?

'Extraordinarily good' The Spectator

A memorable voice in the genre' New York Times

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Critics Review

There's an acute, almost intense intelligence at work in James Wolff's fiction . . . I was hooked on plot and prose, a prose so compelling that it makes you re-read whole paragraphs to savour them again. Wolff is not in this simply to deliver spills and thrills - he's a superb, spare, almost minimal stylist and ... an original
Smoke and Embers
In the smoke-and-mirrors world of spy fiction, James Wolff shines as a steady bright light. Spies and Other Gods is intricately made, slyly humorous and wonderfully entertaining
The Sea
Wonderful, gripping, intelligent and original. Great fun and incredibly insightful regarding the real nature of intelligence work
Ascension
A wonderfully riveting thriller full of surprises
MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service
Praise for James Wolff --
A memorable voice in the genre
New York Times
Extraordinarily good
The Spectator
Wolff is a new Maestro
Evening Standard Books of the Year
A superb debut
The Times Thriller of the Month
A classic spy story . . . Whimsical, inventive and shape shifting
The Wall Street Journal
A dazzling thriller for our time . . . gritty and diamond-sharp
James Naughtie
This important book . . . brought home to me the complex and shifting situation in the Middle East and the danger of looking for simple responses or explanations
Ann Cleeves

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