Welbeck Fiction Ltd, 2023. Good secondhand condition.

The first novel in a new series by Andy McNab, about a former SAS soldier turned cryptography and cyber-weapons specialist.

From the central bank of El Salvador to a tantalum mine in Rwanda, the Acropolis Museum in Athens to the world's biggest freeport in Dubai, Shadow State is a cutting-edge thriller about the the computer codes - the ones and zeroes - that shape our world.

Jackson Pike is from the North of England, doesn't mince his words, and has seen a thing or two. After the SAS he developed his gifts in computer science, specialising in encryption and codebreaking. Then he went rogue, selling his services to the highest bidder - a mercenary and amoral business, but increasingly lucrative and in demand.

In the opening scene of the novel, he is sprung from a Cambodian prison by a woman calling herself Melody Jones. She makes him an offer - to steal something famously hard to steal...