An utterly gripping wartime espionage novel in the tradition of John Le Carre and Robert Harris Boyd's bestselling novel Brazzaville Beach has sold around 270,000 copies. A Bloomsbury super-lead fiction title - to be accompanied by a major publicity and marketing campaign

Shortlisted for British Book Awards: Best Read of the Year 2007 and Independent Booksellers' Book of the Year Award: Adults' Book of the Year 2007.

The most accomplished storyteller of his generation.' Independent 'Boyd has an exceptional ability to tell a really compelling story, in dense imaginative detail, about characters with complex, and convincing, emotional lives.' Los Angeles Times Book Review 'Boyd has combined serious literary intent with an enviable talent for character, storytelling and humour.' Sunday Express

William Boyd is the author of eight previous novels, many of which have won prizes. A Good Man in Africa won the Whitbread Literary Award for the Best First Novel; An Ice Cream War won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker prize; Brazzaville Beach won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and The Blue Afternoon was the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. In addition, some thirteen of his screenplays have been filmed and in 1998 he both wrote and directed the feature film, The Trench.