A Ben Webster Novel Series

An unlikely hero dives into the chaos and madness of Russia and Georgia’s deadly covert conflict, in this rapid-fire tale of corporate espionage gone awry
 
The acclaimed author of The Silent Oligarch and The Jackal’s Share, Christopher Morgan Jones returns to a murky world where corporate spies and government agents battle far from the public eye. Focusing on Georgia, a mountainous republic dominated and threatened by its neighbor Russia, Morgan Jones carries readers deep into an ancient land of chilling compromises and foolhardy valor.
 
Morgan Jones’s novels center on a unique London corporate espionage firm, spearheaded by Ike Hammer and Ben Webster, which follows criminal money anywhere it leads: be it Moscow or Dubai, Monaco or Kazakhstan, a bureaucrat’s pockets or a politician’s bank account. While Webster was the star of the earlier novels—investigating Russian businessmen and KGB operatives in The Silent Oligarch and Persian billionaires and Tehran terrorists in The Jackal’s Share—in The Searcher the focus shifts provocatively to Hammer, making this a perfect starting point for old fans and new readers alike.
 
Journeying to Georgia for the funeral of a friend, a journalist who inexplicably commits suicide after publishing the exposé of a lifetime, Webster mysteriously disappears. As the country rumbles ominously with civil strife and Russian aggression, Hammer rushes to Tbilisi to track down his missing friend. There he is forced to confront the country’s tragic chaos: civilians bombed either by cruel Russian spies or by deceitful Georgian soldiers; violent riots instigated by amoral oligarchs or government saboteurs; and double and even triple agents who are playing all sides against each other at once. Threatened by enemies he cannot name and “friends” he cannot trust, Hammer hurries north—into the lawless mountains bordering Russia itself—to discover the true fate of his friend and Georgia’s future.

“The novel is as much Raymond Chandler as John le Carré . . . Chris Morgan Jones has more than equaled his powerful debut.” —The Observer (U.K.)
 
A vivid and relentless tale of murderous corporate espionage, Chris Morgan Jones’s The Jackal’s Share follows the money through the rotten alleys of Marrakech and the shining spires of Dubai, revealing a Middle East as strange and raw as ever depicted. The story begins when Ben Webster, a London corporate investigator specializing in post-Soviet Russia, is hired by a wealthy Iranian philanthropist to clear his good name. Forced to investigate a man above reproach, Webster soon discovers that his master’s past is actually a dense net of interlocking half-truths. As he closes in on the reality of the Iranian’s fortune—and those who wish to destroy it—Webster learns he may pay for that knowledge with the life of his own family.

Christopher Morgan Jones’s newest book, The Searcher, will be published by Penguin Press on March 22nd, 2016.

“A happy partner to the work of Deighton, Archer, and le Carré… carried on craftily understated prose that approaches cold poetry… a first-class novel.” (Booklist, starred review)

Racing between London and Moscow, Kazakhstan and the Caymans, The Silent Oligarch reveals a sinister unexplored world where the wealthy buy the justice they want—and the silence they need. The first novel by Chris Morgan Jones—after his eleven years of work at the world’s largest business intelligence agency—The Silent Oligarch introduces Benjamin Webster, mercenary spy to the rich and powerful. Hired to destroy a Russian oil baron, Webster discovers that his target’s weak spot is a diffident English lawyer who hides the money generated from his master’s vast criminal empire. Soon Webster’s questions cause the lawyer’s fragile world to crumble, forcing them both into a desperate race around the world to escape the oligarch’s vengeance.

 Christopher Morgan Jones’s newest book, The Searcher, will be published by Penguin Press on March 22nd, 2016.