If you hide your past, it will surely come back to haunt you.

Living a respectable life in Cheltenham as a magistrate and property landlord, former agent and terrorist Tariq Al Hashmi falls into such a trap.

With Libya's Colonel Gaddafi no longer a moving part of the Axis of Evil and the Irish Troubles on the back boiler, what could go wrong?

His days as an embedded sleeper agent with a hidden fuse ready to be lit are surely over. But complacency proves an unreliable companion. Those in the secret world that he once occupied have long memories and other ideas. Unexpectedly his world starts to fall apart and Al Hashmi's former spymasters try to manipulate him in ways he could not have imagined and for purposes he can only guess at.

Author Alex Gardiner's remarkable debut thriller is written with inside knowledge. The plot's twists and turns are spiced with intrigue and complexity that will keep the reader guessing until the very end.