The Shame Archive

The Shame Archive

Hardback original

Hardback (04 Jun 2024)

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Publisher's Synopsis

'Captivating and horrifying at once, a completely plausible evocation of the putrid morass that is the British Establishment and its craven capitulation to Russian money - or indeed, any money. Oliver Harris is squarely in the territory of the greats: Greene and le Carré but also the modern masters, Mick Herron and Adam Brookes. There can be no higher accolade' Manda Scott

How does a secret service confront its past, when its secrets must never be revealed?


Buried deep in MI6's digital archives is the most classified directory of all. It doesn't contain war plans or agent profiles, but shame: the misdeeds of politicians, royalty, business leaders and the service's own personnel.

There are seven decades' worth of images and recordings, usually acquired for the sake of assessing risk, sometimes as a guard against betrayal, often engineered by MI6 for their own purposes. They are the most sensitive two thousand terabytes of data in the Service's possession. When material from the archive begins appearing online, panic spreads through the Establishment like wildfire.

At first, the security breach only manifests itself in apparently random events: a suicide, a disappearance, a breakdown. But when it's discovered that the individuals concerned were all contacted by the same anonymous person, a connection comes into focus. The archive has been leaked. The hunt is now of unprecedented urgency before the entire political and business systems are fatally weakened. That's when they call for Elliot Kane...

About the Publisher

Abacus

Abacus

Abacus is home to some of the world?s most renowned authors, including Donna Tartt, Gore Vidal, Jane Gardam, Primo Levi and Beryl Bainbridge. In 2013, we celebrated our 40th anniversary with the reissue of 18 of our classic books ? a wonderfully diverse collection ranging from Douglas Coupland?s Generation X and Iain Banks? The Wasp Factory, to Tom Holland?s Rubicon and Alexander McCall Smith?s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Originally a non-fiction list with something of an ecological flavour, Abacus has evolved over the years to become one of the most renowned homes for quality fiction and non-fiction, and one with a particularly strong tradition in bestselling memoirs, notably Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom and historian William Woodruff's double No. 1 bestsellers The Road to Nab End and Beyond Nab End. Our non-fiction publishing grew further with the publication of books by some of the most influential writers in their fields, such as Tim Harford, Gillian Tett and Tom Holland, and our fiction publishing continues to go from strength to strength, driven by a new generation of novelists like Kevin Maher and A. D. Miller, who sit alongside global bestsellers like Anita Shreve and Candace Bushnell.

Book information

ISBN: 9781408717455
Publisher: Little, Brown
Imprint: Abacus
Pub date:
Edition: Hardback original
DEWEY: 823.92
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 336
Height: 240mm
Width: 156mm
Spine width: 22mm