The French Concession

A drifting American. A woman who sees too much. A city that swallows secrets whole.Jack is fifty-three, divorced, and running out of reasons to stop moving. When a layover in Shanghai turns into a month, he settles into the French Concession - the tree-lined old French quarter where café culture meets surveillance state - and tries to disappear into language classes and long walks.Then he meets Lian. Sharp, knowing, and connected to a Shanghai he'd never find on his own, she draws him into her world one conversation at a time. By the time he understands what she really is, he's already in too deep - entangled in a web of competing intelligence services, each one convinced he's useful, none of them asking whether he's willing.What follows is a descent through safe houses and border crossings, from the neon sprawl of Shenzhen to the backroads of central Vietnam, as Jack tries to protect the woman who may have been manipulating him from the start - and figure out whether anything between them was real.The French Concession is a literary spy thriller about loneliness, luck, and the terrifying ease of becoming someone else's asset. For readers of Mick Herron, Graham Greene, and Charles Cumming.