Spies, secrets and sleaze — seven gripping new thrillers

In a world where CCTV and smartphones track our every move, the only safe place for degenerate antics is probably a personal safe-room swept for bugs and cameras. An elite brothel in London’s posh Belgravia seems a high-risk option. In The Shame Archive (Abacus £20), Oliver Harris has crafted an enthralling tale about a secret digital repository of bad — sometimes criminal — behaviour, including at the Belgravia brothel, held deep in the bowels of MI6.

Rebecca Sinclair is the wife of a high-flying MP. Life seems perfect until threatening messages start to arrive, reminding her of her past as a high-end escort. Nothing digital, not even the Shame Archive, is ever truly secure and she is soon one of many public figures being blackmailed. Sinclair turns to Elliot Kane — a former MI6 officer now working for himself — for help. Espionage comes at a cost, Kane knows, and not just for its collateral casualties. Kane is haunted, a spy with a conscience. “The sources forcibly retired, imprisoned or still hiding — Kane thought about them every day. It became a tinnitus of the soul.”

Harris steadily cranks up the tension, relating Sinclair’s and Kane’s stories with skill and verve until they meet in an explosive climax. What really lifts the book is the seemingly authentic portrayal of the sleazy interface where Britain’s venal ruling elite meets Russian dirty money.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Spiral, the gritty French police television drama, so I opened Olivier Norek’s Between Two Worlds (MacLehose £22) with high hopes. Happily, my expectations were more than met. Norek, a writer on Spiral, has a notably original protagonist: Adam Sirkis, a captain in Syria’s murderous military police, who is also working for the rebel Free Syrian Army. Sirkis’s determined efforts to save his wife and daughter by trying to get them to England via Libya and Calais are haunting. Norek spares us nothing of the bloodthirsty savagery of the Assad regime, while vivid scene-setting and a fine translation by Nick Caistor keep the narrative flowing quickly in this absorbing, topical story.

A brace of high-quality historical thrillers by two accomplished spy writers takes us back to the 1930s, that dark decade that unleashed fascism, Nazism and the Stalinist purges. Alex Gerlis’s Every Spy a Traitor (Canelo, £16.99) is the first in his new Double Agent series. Charles Cooper, a young British writer, is spending some of his inheritance roaming around Europe in search of material for a novel when he is recruited by a secret British intelligence organisation called The Annexe. But Cooper has already been blackmailed into working for the Soviets, which leads him into very dangerous waters. Gerlis takes a gamble with a slower pace here than in his previous works set in the second world war. It pays off handsomely.

Graham Hurley’s Dead Ground (Head of Zeus, £20) opens in the bloody battlefields and casualty stations of the Spanish Civil War. Annie Wrenne volunteers to nurse on the Republican side, where she is soon swept up in dangerous international intrigue. Other characters include a neatly drawn Admiral Canaris, the real-life Nazi intelligence chief. Once again, Hurley directs his cast with verve, deploying his historical knowledge and research with just enough detail.

In her accomplished previous works, Charlotte Philby (whose grandfather Kim Philby was Britain’s most notorious Communist agent and traitor) virtually invented a new genre by fusing espionage with family dramas. Yet to me the spy elements sometimes felt a little dutiful. Philby’s real interest, I sensed, was identity and the question of whether you can ever truly know someone — themes expertly explored in her new novel, The End of Summer (The Borough Press, £16.99).

Judy McVee arrives in the US in the 1980s, determined to find a rich husband and make a new life, stealing and deceiving along the way. The story moves forward through the decades, interspersed with chapters set in present-day London as Judy’s daughter Francesca has to manage the fallout from her mother’s disappearance. And she too, of course, has secrets. Domestic intrigue and betrayal are served up with style in this standout literary thriller.

Finally, an entertaining summer story and a smart legal page-turner. In Caro Carver’s Bad Tourists (Bantam, £16.99), three women arrive at a luxurious resort in the Maldives for a post-divorce celebration. Naturally, it all goes wrong very quickly. Neatly drawn, easily relatable characters and a twisty plot unfolding in a sun-kissed location make for a fun beach read.

James Comey’s Westport (Head of Zeus £20/Mysterious Press $30) also opens by the sea — at Long Island Sound on America’s Atlantic coast.

It’s the second outing for lawyer Nora Carleton, who has left New York to work as lead counsel at the world’s largest hedge fund. Life is quieter but decent — until she starts investigating apparent insider trading. A colleague is then found dead in a boat and Carleton is the main suspect. Comey, a former director of the FBI, once again deftly uses his insider knowledge of the US legal and financial system to deliver an informed, fast-paced story.

Adam LeBor is the author of ‘Dohany Street’, a Budapest noir crime thriller

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