Star of the North

Tense and compelling.

James Swallow, Sunday Times bestselling author of NOMAD

A superior thriller…steeped in the intrigue, culture and family of a closed regime.

Andrew Gross, New York Times bestselling author

[Y]ou should read this forensic exposure of the horrors of [Kim Jong-un’s] regime in this Tom Clancy-style evocation of what life there is actually like… Fast-moving and compelling, it provides the perfect fictional backdrop to the summit diplomacy we are now witnessing.

Daily Mail

[John] parlays his knowledge into a grim but incisive narrative…. This is a masterly evocation of life under the Kim Jong-il regime.

Barry Forshaw, Guardian

The country has long tried to hide the terrible realities of life under the Kim dynasty, but John’s new novel, a timely political thriller…strips them bare.

Sarah Oliver, Mail on Sunday

A thrilling tale of abduction and escape in North Korea...highly entertaining...Star of the North builds to a gripping climax.

Washington Post

John uses three memorable primary characters to tell a remarkable story about the most opaque country on Earth: North Korea … The lives of these people collide in a harrowing thriller that exposes an amazingly corrupt regime that embraces savage brutality and nearly every kind of lucrative criminal enterprise … a superior thriller.

Booklist

Star of The North reads like a cross between Child-44 and I am Pilgrim and is every bit as good as both of them. Read this book and you will not only feel that you've been to North Korea you will also never, ever want to go there. Brutally realistic, fascinatingly detailed, it's a fantastic thriller whose fantasy is all the more powerful for being based on truth.

Simon Toyne, bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy and Solomon Creed series

The timeliest thriller of 2018. An intricately constructed puzzle box of spies and tradecraft that plunges the reader on a cyanide-laced sprint through North Korea.

Matthew Fitzsimmons, bestselling author of The Short Drop