A virus destroys the communication network of the Canadian diplomatic service. Carson Pryce, a reclusive, moody intelligence analyst, and Rachel Dunn, a brilliant diplomat with a glowing humanitarian track record, are implicated in the event.

For years, Carson has been secretly obsessed with Rachel, and abuses his privileged access to intelligence information to keep track of her and the people around her. He knows things about Rachel which she doesn’t even know herself. The investigation into the virus deepens and Carson initiates a cover-up to prevent damage to Rachel’s reputation. The plot in Borderless Deceit skips easily from Ottawa to Vienna, from Berlin to Alexandria and from Transylvania to Kenya. The action takes place in a world where privacy has disappeared, where hackers circle each other in cyberspace, and where a mouse click can orchestrate deceit in faraway places. Is there space in this for a rekindling of humanity’s enduring values?

Adrian de Hoog was educated in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Oxford, and spent 30 years working as a Canadian diplomat in countries as varied as Kenya and Germany. Adrian de Hoog lives in Ottawa. His first novel, The Berlin Assignment, published in 2006, was a tale of political intrigue with German re-unification providing the backdrop. The scope of his second novel, Borderless Deceit, is more international still. The intrigue spills effortlessly across borders; individual privacy is in short supply.

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