Secret treaties and games of cat and mouse: a choice of recent crime fiction

Almost any promising writer of spy fiction can expect at some point to be called the ‘next Le Carré’, an accolade even more promiscuously applied since the death of the master. James Wolff has immediate credentials to jump the queue, since, like Le Carré, he uses a pseudonym and claims to work at the Foreign Office — though his familiarity with surveillance techniques suggests a slightly different employer.

How to Betray Your Country (Bitter Lemon Press, £8.99) arrives as the second in a planned trilogy, hard on the heels of Wolff’s striking debut, Beside the Syrian Sea. August Drummond is a former British intelligence officer, cashiered for insubordination after the sudden death of his tricky but entirely beloved wife. On a flight to Turkey, he impetuously decides to impersonate a recruit of Islamic extremists who’s then arrested on landing, and in this guise Drummond meets the man’s controller.

A cat and mouse struggle ensues, between Drummond’s efforts to uncover the target of his terrorist assignment and the inevitability of his own exposure.