The Second Traitor

'Gerlis writes some of the best historical spy thrillers in the business and The Second Traitor is no exception' Daily Express

'Plenty of atmospheric intrigue to relish' The Times

'The series showcases the ambiguity of espionage, and its human cost... Gerlis conjures up wartime London with skilfully deployed period detail in this atmospheric tale of deception and betrayal' Financial Times

'An outstanding work of fiction from a writer at the top of his game... he is most certainly one of the spy fiction stars of today' Mark Ellis, author of The Embassy Murders

It's September 1940, and British intelligence is on high alert: the Nazi invasion of Britain is imminent. The German navy is assembling a vast fleet in Rotterdam to ferry men and materiel across the Channel.

Meanwhile, a sinister organisation called The Group – a collection of British and Irish Nazi collaborators – is at work within the UK trying to pave the way for the Wehrmacht.

The Invasion Warning Sub-Committee is established to counter this threat, and Charles Cooper, coming in from the cold after the disintegration of The Annexe, joins up and is tasked with cracking this nefarious network.

But that is not the only concern for the spy chiefs: the search for double agent ‘Archie’ – the Soviet spy and British traitor – is hotting up: they are now confident he works within MI6, and an elaborate scheme is set up to narrow down the list of suspects… To make things worse, they now know for certain that a second traitor, ‘Bertie’, is also in play.

With suspicion at paranoia pitch, can MI6 clean house before the Nazis arrive to help them do it?

Taking the reader from wartime London to the south coast of England, from Berlin to neutral Ireland and from the German intelligence headquarters in Hamburg to the port of Rotterdam, The Second Traitor is the second novel in Alex Gerlis’s highly acclaimed Double Agent series, a follow-up to Every Spy a Traitor.