Dog Rough

Tony Dodds was MI5's most forgettable agent.

The man no one looked at twice, whether in pubs, hotel lobbies, train carriages, or airport lounges. His whole life spent nursing lukewarm pints in the background while other people said things they shouldn't.

Then a glamorous MI6 officer promised him the world. Mayfair casinos. Cuban cigars. A month of living inside a James Bond film. All of which, to the naked eye, seemed too good to be true . . .

Dog Rough spans Soho backrooms and Georgian steam baths, Cambridge animal shelters and the open Atlantic. It is a novel about the distance between who you've been and who you might still become - told by a narrator with four legs, no opposable thumbs, and the driest wit in British intelligence.