Gerald Seymour’s international thrillers have topped best-seller lists in England and have been made into television movies in both the UK and the United States. Like Ken Follett and John le Carré, he is a master at putting strong characters in compelling situations. When sources reveal that Iran’s top assassin has targeted Frank Perry for his next kill, the British Security Service wants Frank to move from the quiet English seacoast village where he’s been hiding for five years.

Officially, the Cold War is over, and the hand of friendship has been exchanged in public. In private, though, the intelligence war continues. A British trawler strays into Russian waters. On its return, the captain has a package for British Intelligence. For the next four years, a high-ranking Russian naval officer provides MI6 with priceless information. But suddenly he goes quiet. Clearly under suspicion, the decision is made to get him out. But his controllers in London know nothing about him.

In a Croatian village near Vukovar, no one who survived will ever forget the night they waited for the weapons they needed to make a last-ditch fight against the advancing Serbs. The promised delivery never came, and the village was overrun. Eighteen years later, a body is unearthed from a field, and with it the identity of the arms dealer who betrayed them. Now the villagers can plot their revenge. In leafy England, arms dealer Harvey Gillott regards himself as a man of his word. There is only one blemish on his record, and that was long ago.

Northern Ireland, spring 1981. Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman’s suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things—and people—aren’t always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It’s no easy job—especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.

Espionage. Blackmail. Revenge. Cunning. Slapstick. State secrets dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this and more in a tight package of five novellas by Mick Herron, CWA Gold Dagger-winning author of Slow Horses.