ASCENSION

One of the best spy series continues with ex-spook Elliot Kane reluctantly investigating the suspicious death of a former colleague on Ascension Island. The former spy is trying to leave the world of espionage behind. Kathryn Taylor, a stalled career in MI6, is running the South Atlantic desk. Rory Bannatyne is a covert technical specialist, dead, apparently of suicide. Three friends from a mission many years ago reconnect when one of them dies. Rory had been tasked with tapping a new transatlantic data cable, but a day before he was due to return home he is found hanged. When Kathryn begs Kane to go over and investigate he can't say no, but it's an uneasy reintroduction to the intelligence game. Ascension is a curious legacy of England's imperial past. Only employees and their families are allowed to live there and it's home to several highly-classified government projects, a British and American military base, and 40 dead volcanic cones. Entirely isolated from the world, the disappearance of a young girl at the same time as Rory's death means local tensions are high. The island contains more secrets than the government knows... 327pp in large softback.