Publishers Weekly
★ 03/10/2014
Brookes, a correspondent for BBC News in Washington, D.C., who was formerly based in China, takes readers deep inside the culture and daily routines of that country in his outstanding fiction debut. Li Huasheng (aka Peanut) has recently escaped from a remote Chinese labor camp after nearly 20 years of confinement for selling military secrets—a livelihood that he has now resumed with the help of one of his former conspirators who evaded capture. Meanwhile, Philip Mangan, a freelance British journalist recruited by his own country’s spies to serve as a messenger for Peanut, wants to sell a software key that would give the West access to China’s national security secrets, including information about troubles with its new nuclear missiles. Good chase scenes and tense dialogue, coupled with a convincing picture of what actually happens in the corridors of power, make Brookes a thriller writer to watch. Author tour. Agent: Catherine Clarke, Felicity Bryan Associates. (May)
From the Publisher
"Night Heron is a wonderfully cinematic novel -- I felt myself visually transported into every scene, watching the action unfold -- that also immersed me in the sounds and smells and feel of China, all the while telling a rich, complex espionage story. A remarkable accomplishment."--Chris Pavone, author of international bestseller The Expats
"Brookes, a correspondent for BBC News in Washington, DC, who was formerly based in China, takes readers deep inside the culture and daily routines of that country in his outstanding fiction debut... Good chase scenes and tense dialogue, coupled with a convincing picture of what actually happens in the corridors of power, make Brookes a thriller writer to watch."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fans of the international espionage genre will inhale this fast tale in a few suspenseful breaths. Brookes uses multiple narrators -- the spy, the engineer, the journalist, the agent, the boss -- whose conflicting alliances tell the real story."--Library Journal
"One of the best and most compulsively readable spy-fiction debuts in years."--Kirkus
"The must-read thriller of the year."--NPR Books
"The pace is frenetic and Brookes does a wonderful job with both the high-tech world of cyber intelligence and survival on Beijing's gritty, smog-smothered streets. Highly recommended."--The Bookseller
Night Heron is a fascinating portrait of the dangerous complexities of spying in a restricted country, the competing agendas driving international intelligence, and China's startlingly varied social realities.A must-read for fans of espionage and smart global fiction in general.--Booklist (starred review)
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2014-05-06
Against all odds, Prisoner 5995—a former professor wrongly convicted of murder—escapes a high security Chinese facility after 20 torturous years. Having concocted a plan to flee China and establish a new identity, he finds an unlikely ally in Mangan, a veteran British journalist based in Beijing.In his former life, the escapee was employed by British intelligence under the code name Peanut. After he finds a place to lay low and recover from the physical abuse he suffered at the prison camp, he tracks down a one-time fellow academic and spy who is now a well-off military researcher; he forces his old colleague to make copies of secret documents by threatening to expose his past—and by beating him to a pulp. When he hears about Mangan, a famous British reporter who lives in the area, Peanut passes the documents to him and asks that Mangan give them to his contacts in the British Embassy. Though he thrives on danger, the last thing Mangan wants is hot papers in his possession; he's already under close scrutiny by state security for a story he wrote on a cult after sneaking into the blockaded town it was occupying. After Mangan is talked into working for British intelligence, all manner of reversals, betrayals, arrests and killings have him and Peanut running for their lives. Brookes, a one-time China correspondent for the BBC, knows this turf exceedingly well and translates that knowledge into a novel that is as strikingly different as it is thrilling. In hinting at China's capabilities as a cyberenemy, the author may be giving us a clue about the subject of his next novel. One can't wait to read it.One of the best and most compulsively readable spy-fiction debuts in years.
