Adam Brookes for many years a journalist and foreign correspondent for BBC News. He reported from China, Indonesia, the US and many other countries, Iraq and Afghanistan among them. His debut novel,
Night Heron, was nominated for the 2014 CWA John Creasey Dagger and appeared on best of the year lists in the
TLS,
Kirkus and
NPR; its follow-up,
Spy Games was nominated for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.
The Spy's Daughter is his third novel. He lives with his family in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Tell them, the Night Heron is hunting . . .
A lone man escapes a labour camp in the dead of night, fleeing across the winter desert of north-west China.
Two decades earlier, he was a spy for the British. Now he finds Beijing transformed and crawling with danger - the fugitive must quickly disappear on its surveillance-blanketed streets or face death.
Desperate and ruthless, he reaches out to his one-time MI6 paymasters via journalist Philip Mangan, offering secrets in return for his life.
Mangan is dragged into a deeper and deeper whirlpool of lies, as the secrets prove more valuable than either of them could ever have known... and not only to the British.
A prisoner on the run, with secrets the world would kill for... Read the award-nominated, utterly authentic and terrifyingly tense first book in Adam Brookes' groundbreaking thriller trilogy.An intriguing, skilful and taut novel...elegantly plotted and with a piercing eye for detailThe best British spy novel debut in yearsDebut of the month is Adam Brookes's accomplished
Night HeronThe BBC's former China correspondent joins the ranks of John le Carré and Frederick Forsyth with a laser-sharp Beijing spy thriller . . . Brookes arrives a full formed talent, with a complete mastery of the genre
Night Heron reeks with verisimilitude in its settings and atmosphere, and is accompanied by a cleverly plotted action-filled story of Anglo-Chinese espionageA page turner that takes the reader from China's far west to the streets of the fascinating Chinese capital, pulsing with power and dangerAn outstanding first novel
Night Heron by Adam Brookes, a smart spy thriller set in China, I found wholly diverting: another worldThe pace is frenetic and Brookes does a wonderful job with both the high-tech world of cyber intelligence and survival on Beijing's gritty, smog-smothered streets. Highly recommended.The best spy novel so far this year . . . signals the start of what should be a very promising career in fictional spying. Combining the intrigue and complexity of the classic spy novel with contemporary themes and skilfully realised Chinese locations this is certainly an espionage novel for the 21st Century.Brookes, a correspondent for BBC News in Washington, D.C., who was formerly based in China, takes readers deep inside the culture and daily routines of that country in his outstanding fiction debut . . . Good chase scenes and tense dialogue, coupled with a convincing picture of what actually happens in the corridors of power, make Brookes a thriller writer to watch.Brookes, a one-time China correspondent for the BBC, knows this turf exceedingly well and translates that knowledge into a novel that is as strikingly different as it is thrilling . . . One of the best and most compulsively readable spy-fiction debuts in years.
Night Heron is a fascinating portrait of the dangerous complexities of spying in a restricted country, the competing agendas driving international intelligence, and China's startlingly varied social realities. A must-read for fans of espionage and smart global fiction in general.Engrossing and compellingFans of the international espionage genre will inhale this fast tale in a few suspenseful breaths. Brookes uses multiple narrators-the spy, the engineer, the journalist, the agent, the boss-whose conflicting alliances tell the real story.This exciting thriller opens a rare window on the real China of todaySpine-tinglingFast-paced, intelligent, stimulating and action-packed
