Dead Spy Running - Softcover

Stock, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007300700 ISBN 13: 9780007300709

Publisher: Blue Door, 2009

Synopsis

Re-inventing the spy story for the 21st Century.

John Le Carre meets Jason Bourne!

Daniel Marchant, a suspended MI6 officer, is running the London Marathon. He is also running out of time. A competitor is strapped with explosives. If he drops his pace, everyone around him will be killed, including the US ambassador to London. Marchant tries to thwart the attack, but is he secretly working for the terrorists?

There are those in America who already suspect Marchant of treachery. Just like they suspected his late father, the former head of MI6, who was removed from his job by the CIA. Marchant is treated like an enemy combatant - rendition, waterboarding - but he has friends who are disillusioned with America’s war on terror. Friends like Leila, his beautiful MI6 colleague and lover, and Sir Marcus Fielding, the new Chief who resents the White House’s growing influence in Whitehall.

On the run from the CIA, Marchant is determined to prove his father’s innocence in a personal journey that takes him from Wiltshire, via Poland, to India. It was here that the former MI6 chief once met with one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, and where the new President of America is shortly to visit. But was that meeting proof of a mole within MI6 or the best penetration of Al Qu’aeda the West has ever had? And was Marchant’s father the keeper of another, darker secret?

In a compelling thriller that updates the spy novel for the 21st century – think John Le Carre meets Jason Bourne - Marchant discovers the shocking realities of personal betrayal and national loyalty, and that love can be the biggest risk of all.

About this title

Product Description:

Dead Spy Running

Review:

A relatively new publishing imprint can always use a few winners to achieve lift-off; new publishing kid on the block Blue Door must be rubbing their hands, as the auguries are very promising for Jon Stock’s highly impressive Dead Spy Running. The book arrives emblazoned with raves from the likes of Lee Child and Robert Goddard – hinting to the reader that both action and storytelling will push all the requisite buttons.

Daniel Marchant is an inactive MI9 operative. Rather than languishing in torpor, he has decided to run the London Marathon. But the dangers of his ex-day job are not far away – one of the other competitors is lethally strapped with explosives, and if he reduces his pace, all around him will die bloodily. Marchant does his best to avert the slaughter, but there are those who think that he is compromised in his professional life. The CIA ensured that Marchant’s father was removed from his position as head of MI6, and they are convinced that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. Marchant finds himself treated like a suspected terrorist (extraordinary rendition, waterboarding), and things look very black for him. But there are people who are not against him: Marchant’s colleague (and inamorata) Leila. And, more importantly, new Intelligence chief Sir Marcus Fielding, who is suspicious of America’s apparently unshakeable grip over UK foreign policy.

The opening premise (don’t drop below a certain pace or risk detonation) may be borrowed from the movie Speed, but that’s the only element here that doesn’t come up as fresh as paint; Jon Stock has taken the accoutrements of the espionage thriller and given them a bracing wash and rinse. The real achieve, however, is to marry the kinetic energy of the Jason Bourne franchise (that’s the films, rather than Ludlum’s books) with the political sophistication and dyspeptic view of international relations of John le Carré and Gerald Seymour. The publisher Blue Door has a potential bestseller in Dead Spy Running. --Barry Forshaw

About this edition

• Publisher: Blue Door
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0007300700
• ISBN 13: 9780007300709
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320