The first novel in a new series by Andy McNab, about a former SAS soldier turned cryptography and cyber-weapons specialist. After leaving the SAS, Jackson Pike went rogue, selling his services to the highest bidder - a mercenary and amoral business, but increasingly lucrative and in demand. 'This is the new frontier of warfare, and McNab is on the front line' - Michael Robotham The first novel in a new series by Andy McNab, about a former SAS soldier turned cryptography and cyber-weapons specialist. From the central bank of El Salvador to a tantalum mine in Rwanda, the Acropolis Museum in Athens to the world's biggest freeport in Dubai, Shadow State is a cutting-edge thriller about the the computer codes - the ones and zeroes - that shape our world. Jackson Pike is from the North of England, doesn't mince his words, and has seen a thing or two. After the SAS he developed his gifts in computer science, specialising in encryption and codebreaking. Then he went rogue, selling his services to the highest bidder - a mercenary and amoral business, but increasingly lucrative and in demand. In the opening scene of the novel, he is sprung from a Cambodian prison by a woman calling herself Melody Jones.

She makes him an offer - to steal something famously hard to steal.