Book Summary and Reviews of The Searcher by Christopher Morgan Jones

The Searcher by Christopher Morgan Jones

The Searcher

by Christopher Morgan Jones

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  • Mar 2016, 400 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

An unlikely hero dives into the chaotic madness of Russia and Georgia's deadly covert conflict, in this rapid-fire tale of corporate espionage gone awry.

The acclaimed author of The Silent Oligarch and The Jackal's Share, Christopher Morgan Jones returns to a murky world where corporate spies and government agents battle far from the public eye. Focusing on Georgia, a mountainous republic threatened by Russia to the north, Morgan Jones carries readers deep into an ancient land of chilling compromises and foolhardy valor.

Morgan Jones's novels center on a unique London corporate espionage firm spearheaded by Ike Hammer and Ben Webster, which follows criminal money anywhere it leads: be it Moscow or Dubai, Monaco or Kazakhstan, a bureaucrat's pockets or a politician's bank account. While Webster was the star of the earlier novels - investigating Russian businessmen and KGB operatives in The Silent Oligarch, Persian billionaires and Tehran terrorists in The Jackal's Share - in The Searcher the focus shifts provocatively to Hammer, making this a perfect starting point for old fans and new readers alike.

Journeying to Georgia for the funeral of a friend, a journalist who inexplicably committed suicide after publishing the exposé of a lifetime, Webster mysteriously disappears. As the country rumbles ominously with civil strife and Russian aggression, Hammer rushes to Tbilisi to track down his missing friend. Once in Georgia, Hammer is forced to confront the country's tragic chaos: civilians bombed either by cruel Russian spies or by deceitful Georgian soldiers; violent riots instigated by amoral oligarchs or government saboteurs; double and even triple agents who play all sides against each other at once. Threatened by enemies he cannot name and "friends" he cannot trust, Hammer rushes north - into the lawless mountains bordering Russia itself - to discover the true fate of his friend and Georgia's future.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Suspenseful from start to finish, with plenty of regional color informing the narrative, Jones' third spy thriller is a flawless piece of storytelling." - Kirkus

"Hammer proves to be as good a leading man as Webster - smart, instinctive, nobody's fool. More captivating, however, is Jones's sensory portrait of Georgia, where human behavior is brutish and unfeeling one moment, big-hearted and gentle the next." - Publishers Weekly

This information about The Searcher was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Christopher Morgan Jones Author Biography

Christopher Morgan Jones was in Bromsgrove and grew up in Kinver in south Staffordshire. He studied English Language and Literature at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. For over a decade he worked for Kroll, the world's largest investigations company, where he specialized in Russian projects and complex disputes. He lives in London with his wife and two children. The Searcher is his third novel.

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