Books - Icelight

Icelight by Aly Monroe - 13 October 2011

1947. Threadbare London endures the bleakest, coldest winter for decades. Food rationing is worse than during the war. Coal supplies run out. The Thames freezes over.

Against a background of black ice, blackouts and the black market, agent Peter Cotton is seconded to Operation Sea-snake. MI5 is in the grip of civil war; MI6 is riddled with traitors. Unsure who to trust - or even who is pulling the strings - Cotton, ever the outsider, must protect an atomic scientist caught up in a vicious homophobic witch-hunt, limit the damage caused by a bully-boy MP, rely on a rent-boy informer and, despite the murderous attentions of a couple of Glasgow razor boys, embark on a ruthless hunt of his own.

>> Read an excerpt from Icelight

>> Q & A for Icelight

 

Mike Ripley on ICELIGHT: ...Once again, Monroe’s research is spot on and she paints her supporting cast with so many shades of grey that it makes a John Le Carré novel look positively straightforward. This is wonderfully atmospheric, if chilling stuff; so chilling it makes you want to turn on that forbidden second bar on your electric fire...