How to Betray Your Country

Following on from the acclaimed debut novel Beside the Syrian Sea, this is the second title in a planned trilogy about loyalty and betrayal in the modern world.

An authentic thriller about the thin line between following your conscience and following orders. James Wolff is the pseudonym of a young English novelist who “has been working for the British government for the last ten years”.

Things are looking bad for disgraced spy August Drummond. In emotional free fall after the death of his wife, fired for a series of security breaches… and now his neighbour on the flight to Istanbul won’t stop talking. The only thing keeping August sane is the hunch that there’s something not quite right about the nervous young man several rows ahead – a hunch confirmed when August watches him throw away directions to a European cemetery seconds before being detained by Turkish police. A reckless August decides to go to the cemetery, where he meets a mysterious figure from the dark heart of the Islamic State and quickly finds himself drawn into a shadowy plot to murder an Iranian scientist in Istanbul.

But nothing is what it seems, and before long August realizes he has gone too far to turn back. As he struggles to break free from the clutches of Islamic State and play off British intelligence against their Turkish counterparts, he will find his resourcefulness, ingenuity and courage tested to the very limit of what he can endure.