News photographer Michael Mannis had done ‘a little business’ with MI5 before – but those were straightforward, small-time jobs with little danger and no consequences.

When Mannis is offered an unusually large fee to slip into communist Albania and take covert photographs of a structure that may not even exist, he suspects he might be getting into something far more serious.

According to Mannis’s contact at MI5, the assignment involves telling ‘only a few’ white lies about his background.

But when Mannis learns the true and desperate importance of what he must do, his suspicions are confirmed.

‘One of the world’s best thriller writers’ – Irish Independent

‘Beats le Carré and the rest at their own game’ – New York Magazine