Traitors by Alex Shaw

French Intelligence officer Sophie Racine is tasked with traveling into the heart of a warzone in Ukraine. Her mission is to assassinate Sasha Vasilev, a Russian mole who took the French secret service apart piece by piece and gave their secrets to the Kremlin.

Ex-SAS trooper and MI6 Officer Aidan Snow is also in Ukraine. Sent by British Intelligence, he must extract an innocent citizen caught up in the conflict in rebel-controlled Donetsk.

When their missions collide, Snow and Racine find themselves outgunned and outnumbered. Even if they make it out of the warzone alive, danger won’t be far behind…

Alex Shaw recently spent some time with The Big Thrill discussing his latest thriller, TRAITORS:

What was the biggest challenge this book presented? What about the biggest opportunity?

This is the first time I have written a thriller with a female protagonist, and that made me write in a much more open manner. Originally I had wanted to create a closed and almost inhuman character, but the story dictated I go deeper, and I am so glad that I did.

Alex Shaw

Was there anything new you discovered, or that surprised you, as you wrote this book?

Whilst writing this thriller, I was surprised by how much more inner emotion I was to get on the page by uniting my new female lead with my existing male hero from other novels.

Without spoilers, are there any genre conventions you wanted to upend or challenge with this book?

I wanted to create a strong female lead who also had the attributes of Jason Bourne or James Bond, and hopefully I have managed to do just that.

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Alex Shaw spent the second half of the 1990s in Kyiv, Ukraine running his own business consultancy before being head-hunted for a division of Siemens. The next few years saw him doing business for the company across the former USSR, the Middle East, and Africa.

Alex is an active member of the ITW (The International Thriller Writers organization) and the CWA (the Crime Writers Association). He is the author of the #1 International Kindle Bestselling Aidan Snow SAS thrillers Cold Blood, Cold Black, and Cold East, the international bestselling Jack Tate Thrillers Total Blackout and Total Fallout, the Delta Force Vampire series, and the forthcoming Sophie Racine thriller series. His writing has also been published in the thriller anthologies Death Toll, Death Toll 2, Death Toll 3, Capital Crimes, and Action Pulse Pounding Tales 2 alongside international bestselling authors Stephen Leather and Matt Hilton.

Cold Blood, Cold Black, and Cold East are commercially published by Harpercollins (HQ Digital) in English and Luzifer Verlag in German.

Alex, his wife, and their two sons divide their time between homes in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sussex, England, and Doha, Qatar. Follow Alex on Twitter: @alexshawhetman or Instagram @alexshawthrillerwriter or find him on Facebook.

Alex is represented by Justin Nash and Kate Nash of The Kate Nash Literary Agency. @JustinNashLit @katenashagent

To learn more about the author and his work, please visit his website.