How to Betray Your Country

Things are looking bad for disgraced spy August Drummond. In emotional free fall after the death of his wife, fired for a series of unprecedented security breaches… and now his neighbour on the flight to Istanbul won't stop talking. The only thing keeping him sane is the hunch there's something suspicious about the nervous young man several rows ahead – a hunch that is confirmed when August watches him throw away directions to an old cemetery moments before being detained by Turkish police. When August decides to go in his place, it sets him on a path from which there may be no return…




Genre: Thriller

"This important book...brought home the complex and shifting situation in the Middle East and the danger of looking for simple explanations. I loved Jonas - the quiet man pushed by his own guilt into becoming a hero." - Ann Cleeves

"Great characters, convincing detail and a compelling story. All too human MI6 desk jockey, Jonas, is no James Bond but he manages to stay one step ahead of his ex-employers, the CIA, Hezbollah, Isis and the reader right up until the final showdown in the desert." - Charlie Higson

"Great espionage novels are not genre pieces but studies of betrayal, dishonour, expediency, loyalty -- the darkness of human nature, the subjects of all literature. Unsurprisingly, it's hard to find good ones but I just finished Beside the Syrian Sea by James Wolff, a debut by an ex-spy, is superb: an adventure from London to Lebanon and Syria and the desperate struggle for survival in the face of war and betrayal. Wolff is a new maestro." - Simon Sebag Montefiore

"Having confessed my addiction to crime, I should also admit that a good spy story will always have me hooked. Beside the Syrian Sea, by James Wolff. His name is a pseudonym, for reasons that most readers will guess is connected to his job, because this is an account of a hostage-taking in the Middle East and the efforts of a renegade MI5 officer to rescue his father, and it trembles with realistic detail. I know we'll hear more of him." - James Naughtie

"James Wolff clearly knows in detail the complex and murky world of Middle Eastern intrigue. An intelligent, exciting and wholly convincing novel." - Piers Paul Read