The Enigma Girl

A masterclass in espionage thriller fiction from the heir to John le Carre for fans of Mick Herron, Charles Cumming and David McCloskey. Meet disgraced MI5 agent Slim Parsons, a character who - like Lisbeth Salander - will sear your soul

Slim Parsons is all but burned.

Her last deep cover job for MI5 ended with a life-and-death struggle on a private jet that caused her to go on the run from both the deadly target and her angry bosses in the Security Service. They say that violence comes too easily to her; that she's bordering on delinquent and unsuitable for the roll of an MI5 operative.

Yet she is recalled and asked to infiltrate a news website that's causing alarm in the highest circles. It is staffed by a group descended from wartime codebreakers operating from an unassuming office block near Bletchley Park. Operation Linesman looks like a come down, the curtain on a brilliant career in the shadows. However, she accepts the assignment on condition that the Security Service searches for her missing brother.

Linesman turns out to be anything but simple. Her personal loss, her previous deep cover role, and a threat to MI5 itself from her original target come together in a three-way collision.

And all the while she is watched by someone even deeper in the shadows than she is.

Enjoyable, beautifully written, surprising and engrossing, with a blazing moral energy Rory Stewart, author of Politics on the Edge
The rarest of political thrillers - well written, fast paced, with an undercover MI5 protagonist who is forced to make very human choices. A smart thriller - it reads like it was drawn from today's headlines Paul Vidich, author of Beirut Station
Porter is a master of the modern spy thriller. In Slim Parsons he has created a female agent for our times. The action packed storyline is taut with tension. A tour de force! Jane Thynne, author of Midnight in Vienna
Porter ... knows his way around both the corridors of power and the new media. [He] delivers another in a series of smart, timely reads Financial Times
Fastmoving, affecting ... touches on contemporary issues, from people trafficking and modern slavery to money's role in corrupting the powerful Literary Review
Porter draws on his journalistic experience in this riveting, deeply researched novel about the heirs to the Bletchley Park codebreakers, corruption, the role of AI, and state overreach Saga magazine

Henry Porter was a newspaper columnist for the Observer and former London editor of Vanity Fair. He has written several acclaimed and bestselling thrillers, including Brandenburg, which won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, A Spy's Life and Empire State, both nominated for the same award. He is also the author of the Paul Samson spy thrillers: Firefly, which won the 2019 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize; White Hot Silence and The Old Enemy. Henry Porter is frequently described as the heir to John le Carre. He lives in Paddington, London.

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