Death Stake

The trail of missing coders leads a spy into an international underworld of treachery, double agents, and digital espionage in a propulsive thriller by a Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

Retired intelligence operative Brad Trasker heads security at a remote aerospace facility when there’s a major breach. A photo of their top-secret AI-designed hydrogen engine has surfaced online. Trasker’s investigation into who did it soon leads to a start-up in Bangkok, where its three software developers have disappeared, along with nearly a million dollars in investment money.

Following their tracks, Trasker hits a dead end. The start-up’s HQ is a padlocked crime scene. No one—not the cagey locals, the mobbed-up gangs, or the Royal Thai Police—is keen on answering Trasker’s questions. But their message is clear: get out of Bangkok or die.

Hunted by assassins, Trasker is drawn into the same complex high-tech underworld of cryptocurrency, digital espionage, and betrayal that swallowed up the runaway coders. As the line between ally and enemy blurs, and the stakes become life and death, Trasker must navigate the dangerous intersection of modern intelligence and old-school spy games to survive.

Andrew Mayne is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Night Owl in his Trasker series; The Girl Beneath the Sea, Black Coral, Sea Storm, Sea Castle, and Dark Dive in his Underwater Investigation Unit series; Angel Killer, Fire in the Sky, Name of the Devil, and the Edgar Award–nominated Black Fall in his Jessica Blackwood series; and The Naturalist, Looking Glass, Murder Theory, and Dark Pattern in his Naturalist series. The star of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week special Andrew Mayne: Ghost Diver and A&E’s Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne, he is also a magician who toured as an illusionist when he was a teenager and went on to work for Penn & Teller, David Blaine, and David Copperfield. Ranked as the fifth bestselling independent author of the year by Amazon UK, Andrew currently hosts the Weird Things podcast and works on creative applications for artificial intelligence. He was also the first prompt engineer and served as science communicator for OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. For more information, visit andrewmayne.com.