COMING NOVEMBER 2015

Spring 1915. As the Great War burns its way across Europe, Jack McColl, a spy for His Majesty’s Navy, is stationed in India, charged with defending the Empire against Bengali terrorists and their German allies. In England, meanwhile, suffragette journalist Caitlin Hanley begins the business of rebuilding her life after the execution of her brother, an Irish republican sympathizer whose plot Jack McColl—Caitlin’s ex-lover—had foiled. The war is changing everything, and giving fresh impulse to those causes—feminism, socialism and Irish independence—which she as a journalist has long supported.

The threat of a Rising in Dublin alarms McColl’s bosses as much as it dazzles Caitlin. It was one Irish plot which came between Jack and Caitlin in 1914, and it will take another to bring them back together, as both enemies and lovers.
 

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PRAISE FOR JACK OF SPIES:
A Seattle Times Best Mystery of the Year
An IndieNext Selection
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Mysteries & Thrillers Pick
A Library Journal Editor's Pick
A Deadly Pleasures Best Book of the Year

“[Downing] is a master at bringing the past to life through the careful and often loving observation of even minor players and through the artful deployment of specific detail. In addition, Jack McColl’s debut has a zest, an exoticism and a joie de vivre well-suited to an era when best sellers were being written by Zane Grey, suffragettes were demanding the vote, and opium parlors were a readily accessible temptation.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Moves along briskly and offers interesting facts about events now a century past . . . Always entertaining.”
—The Washington Post
“When his ‘innocent’ data-gathering escalates into knife fights and arrest warrants, McColl finds himself in an advanced game of espionage he hadn’t intended on playing. I can already see Gerard Butler in the lead role of the film version of this book.”
—Parade
“Smart and erudite . . . A ripping good tale.”
—The Seattle Times

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