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  • Published: 30 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529933482
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $24.99

Red Star Down




A gripping international thriller from the author of THE STAR OF THE NORTH

A gripping international thriller from the author of THE STAR OF THE NORTH

It's 2018. A desperate, starving 18-year-old North Korean defector makes it to the US consulate in Hanoi, Vietnam. He knows only one Western name. Jenna Williams. He asks to meet her.

Jenna works under an alias at the US embassy in Russia arranging university exchanges - the cover for her role as a senior intelligence officer assigned to the CIA's Moscow station. She 37 years old, a Korean-African-American.
With Jenna's help, Woo-jin, known as 'Books', receives the asylum and US citizenship granted to all North Korean defectors. He speaks Russian and English well, so at Jenna's suggestion he starts to study at the American School in Moscow so that she can help him acclimatise to the world outside North Korea.

But while watching a television news conference on the eve of a summit in Singapore, Books is shocked to discover he recognises one of the the president's aides, Eric Rahn. He was a fellow cadet of the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School in North Korea.

Jenna requests an urgent face-to-face meeting with the CIA director to warn him that the White House has been infiltrated. But with North Korean killers closing in, Jenna must get out of Russia fast. At the same time in Singapore, as the historic meeting with the North Korean leader is about to begin, Eric Rahn has the President's ear, and urges him to make a secret promise that will have fateful consequences...

  • Published: 30 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529933482
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

D. B. John

D. B. John has lived in South Korea and is one of the few Westerners to have visited North Korea. He co-authored The Girl With Seven Names, Hyeonseo Lee’s New York Times bestselling memoir about her escape from North Korea.

Also by D. B. John

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Praise for Red Star Down

A compelling and suspenseful thriller that kept me gripped throughout

AJAY CHOWDHURY

A richly satisfying thriller on an epic scale, magnificently conceived and brilliantly executed

ANDREW TAYLOR

Immensely enjoyable. A rich, epic thriller in the grand tradition ... This is exactly what a contemporary thriller should be: a gripping narrative with intriguing twists, vivid characters and well-drawn settings that is not merely very well researched about geopolitics but sheds new light on them too

JEREMY DUNS

A delightfully audacious spy story… a lot of fun to read, not least for John’s insight that for the three autocratic leaders [Trump, Putin, Kim Jong Un] politics has become…more about dynasty than democracy

The Times

[A] superb doorstep of a book, that weaves real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a clever, believable spy thriller

The Sun

[An] audacious geopolitical thriller

Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*
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