A businessman with a dark secret, a Russian assassin and a provincial journalist are caught up in a terrifying deception orchestrated by a sociopathic MI6 operative.
1984: Ronald Reagan has announced the Strategic Defence Initiative (otherwise known as Star Wars) plunging the British Government into a state of shock. With the Cold War in its death throes, the UK has neither the funds nor the technology to match its allies. However MI6 has always known that it doesn’t matter if you actually have the gun or not, so long as your enemy thinks that you do. Covert operative Colin Medlin is tasked with orchestrating a credible deception regarding the UK’s own Missile Defence programme.
Medlin’s bloody business has far-reaching consequences: entrepreneur Paul Jones discovers his lucrative contract with the government comes with strings attached; KGB assassin, Sofia Petrovna, believes herself to have been abandoned by her country and left to rot in suburban Britain - until she is given a list of names and a gun; disillusioned local hack Tom Riggs stumbles upon the conspiracy, but can barely hold down his lowly job at a provincial newspaper.
This perilous game, where one lie hides another, stretches across two decades and seven countries. In the maelstrom that Medlin unleashes, not everyone will get out alive.
Damaged States is the first in a planned trilogy of novels featuring Colin Medlin: a man reluctant to die for his country, but who won't think twice about killing for it...
1984: Ronald Reagan has announced the Strategic Defence Initiative (otherwise known as Star Wars) plunging the British Government into a state of shock. With the Cold War in its death throes, the UK has neither the funds nor the technology to match its allies. However MI6 has always known that it doesn’t matter if you actually have the gun or not, so long as your enemy thinks that you do. Covert operative Colin Medlin is tasked with orchestrating a credible deception regarding the UK’s own Missile Defence programme.
Medlin’s bloody business has far-reaching consequences: entrepreneur Paul Jones discovers his lucrative contract with the government comes with strings attached; KGB assassin, Sofia Petrovna, believes herself to have been abandoned by her country and left to rot in suburban Britain - until she is given a list of names and a gun; disillusioned local hack Tom Riggs stumbles upon the conspiracy, but can barely hold down his lowly job at a provincial newspaper.
This perilous game, where one lie hides another, stretches across two decades and seven countries. In the maelstrom that Medlin unleashes, not everyone will get out alive.
Damaged States is the first in a planned trilogy of novels featuring Colin Medlin: a man reluctant to die for his country, but who won't think twice about killing for it...
