Authentic, taut and compelling. Brookes is the real deal' Charles Cumming In many ways, Pearl Tao was a typical American child. She spent summer days at the pool, played softball and lingered at suburban barbecues in her home city of Washington DC. Yet she is also an academic prodigy, with a university place sponsored by a secretive advanced technology corporation. Only now, aged nineteen, has she begun to understand the terrifying truth of what her role is to be. What her parents intend her to become. Pearl's only hope of escape lies with two British spies: one, Trish Patterson, sidelined in disgrace; the other, former journalist Philip Mangan, gone rogue and following a trail of corruption. Helping Pearl might be the most important and dangerous thing either will ever do. The stunning third novel from multi-award-nominated author Adam Brookes is paranoid, tense and spy fiction at its very finest.