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The Spy
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  • Published: 6 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529931730
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $24.99

The Spy

Formats & editions
Paperback
6 May 2025
EBook
4 Apr 2024
Audiobook
4 Apr 2024
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The fourth instalment of the Kamil Rahman murder mystery series, THE SPY sees Kamil and his amateur-sleuth restaurant manager partner, Anjoli thrown into the midst of a terrorist plot

ONE BOY MISSING. ONE MAN UNDERCOVER. A WHOLE NATION AT RISK.

Detective Kamil Rahman is working for the Met Police when he gets the call from MI5. They’ve received intelligence of a terrorist plot, and it’s Kamil they need.

Posing as a disaffected cop, and working back in his friend Anjoli’s beloved restaurant on Brick Lane, Kamil attempts to infiltrate the cell. What he uncovers leads him halfway across the world to Kashmir, and face to face with an old nemesis.

Meanwhile Anjoli starts to investigate the disappearance of a young boy who’s sending coded messages to his parents. As she attempts to solve his clues, she finds herself in greater danger than she could have imagined.

Time is running out for Kamil and Anjoli: can they save the boy, and save a nation, before it’s too late?


For fans of Robert Galbraith, Anthony Horowitz and Elly Griffiths, The Spy is the compelling, thought-provoking new mystery in the Detective Kamil Rahman series.
  • Published: 6 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529931730
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $24.99
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About the author

Ajay Chowdhury

Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures.The Cook (Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective (Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) – is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing), the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.
portrait photo of Ajay Chowdhury

Also by Ajay Chowdhury

Eden Falls
The Shadow
The Detective
The Waiter
The Cook
See all

Praise for The Spy

Ever since I discovered Ajay Chowdhury's wonderful Kamil Rahman detective novels, they have offered a feast of great stories, vivid characters, mouth-watering food and fascinating insight into the world of Bengali Muslims in London's Brick Lane. I love his mix of humane feeling, romantic comedy and very modern plotting. THE SPY is his fourth and most ambitious, tackling trans-continental crime,.and pitting his engagingly modest, emotionally confused and very brave hero against the worst villain yet. He is a pleasure to read.

Amanda Craig

Nobody writes about modern London like Ajay Chowdhury. This book rings with passion for the city's life, its food, its politics - and above all - its darkness.

William Shaw

An intelligent, immersive thriller absolutely brimming with tension. Ajay Chowdhury’s deftness of touch brings both realism and sensitivity to a difficult theme. Superb writing

Marion Todd

The Kamil & Anjoli crime fiction series from Ajay Chowdhury is bursting with innovative thinking... If you’re new to Kamil, what joy for you to have a long & growing series ahead of you

Paul Waters

The plot races to a splendidly dramatic ending; Chowdhury’s writing is compelling and compassionate, especially on the themes of displacement, and divided loyalties personal and political.

The Guardian

Chowdhury is brilliant at incidental detail and unexpected plot twists, while highlighting the conflicts experienced by characters with a foot in more than one culture

Sunday Times

The 400-odd incident-packed pages pass in a flash

Financial Times