Should you spy on your allies?

ACCIDENTAL AGENT by Alan Judd (S&S £14.99, 272 pp)

AS A former soldier and diplomat, Judd’s insight into the intelligence service is on display in this superbly crafted spy thriller.

Brexit is looming and Charles Thoroughgood, head of MI6, knows he is not supposed to be spying on the European Union, no matter how tempted.

Suddenly, his ambitious deputy uncovers an extraordinary source of information on the EU’s thinking. But is it to be trusted? Is his deputy gilding the lily because he wants to take over Thoroughgood’s job as MI6’s ‘C’?

Charles knows his masters in the Foreign Office will be anxious to get their hands on what may represent the EU’s bottom line. At the same moment, he discovers that he may have a family connection to a suspected terrorist on the loose in Britain, whom MI5 are keen to investigate.

A beautifully observed, vivid picture of modern spying. THE DEVIL ASPECT (Constable £16.99, 496 pp) THIS scalpel-sharp dissection of the nature of evil from the award-winning Russell is set in Czechoslovakia in 1935. An ambitious, if naïve, young psychoanalyst, Dr Viktor Kosárek, has a new job at a remote lunatic asylum in a castle that houses the socalled ‘Devil’s Six’, the most dangerous killers in Europe.

Meanwhile, in Prague, a serial murderer known as the ‘Leather Apron’ is preying on young women in a way that is uncannily reminiscent of Jack the Ripper.

All this is set against the background of the rise of National Socialism, and the Nazi party, in neighbouring Germany. A splendidly Gothic story, inspired by European folklore, it asks difficult questions about how we judge evil — including whether the Devil can show himself in human form. It is breathtaking.

FREEFALL by Jessica Barry (Harvill £12.99, 368 pp) A COMPELLING debut, this opens with a young woman surviving a two-seater plane crash in the Colorado Rockies, where the pilot dies.

Allison Carpenter is determined to survive, though you

are never quite sure why, nor why there appear to be mysterious pursuers anxious to find her. Thousands of miles away, her mother, Maggie, is desperate to discover whether Allison is alive.

So begins a search across the U.S., where nothing is what it seems. Allison appeared to have the perfect life, engaged to a handsome, rich new boyfriend whom her mother knew nothing about. Are there skeletons in his life which may have put Allison in danger? Emotionally true and strikingly well told.