A businessman flies by private jet for a half-hour lunch in Doha, Qatar. This would have been no big deal except that he is the CIA’s main asset in the Middle East and, six hours later, is found dead in his villa.

Michaela ‘Mike’ Kingdom was meant to be investigating something else for Leonard de Vries, her old CIA and Five Eyes boss, when he asked her to help him find the killers. She had been one of his analysts in London before the ‘accident’ that had killed her husband and damaged her leg.

She told everyone many times that she didn't do fieldwork, but no one listened, not even Mike herself. Leonard told her not to worry as he had organised help in the form of another ex-CIA agent, now a Paralympian in the US basketball team