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A Spy Inside the Castle:
le Carré meets
Black Mirror
in this cerebral espionage thriller about secrets, power, and the cost of truth.
When intelligence analyst Ethan Briar is drawn into a covert mission on the windswept Isle of Skye, he enters a world where nothing is as it seems. An abandoned supercomputer, a defector's warning, and the specter of a long-buried betrayal set the stage for a high-stakes investigation with global implications.
At Castlemartin Manor-a decaying stronghold for a once-cutting-edge surveillance program-Ethan is forced to navigate shifting loyalties, encrypted legacies, and the labyrinthine politics of modern intelligence. As the storm outside intensifies, so does the war between faith and cynicism, memory and manipulation, human judgment and machine prediction.
Gripping, intelligent, and hauntingly prescient, A Spy Inside the Castle explores the intersection of technology and truth in an age where perception is weaponized-and no one is beyond suspicion.
When intelligence analyst Ethan Briar is drawn into a covert mission on the windswept Isle of Skye, he enters a world where nothing is as it seems. An abandoned supercomputer, a defector's warning, and the specter of a long-buried betrayal set the stage for a high-stakes investigation with global implications.
At Castlemartin Manor-a decaying stronghold for a once-cutting-edge surveillance program-Ethan is forced to navigate shifting loyalties, encrypted legacies, and the labyrinthine politics of modern intelligence. As the storm outside intensifies, so does the war between faith and cynicism, memory and manipulation, human judgment and machine prediction.
Gripping, intelligent, and hauntingly prescient, A Spy Inside the Castle explores the intersection of technology and truth in an age where perception is weaponized-and no one is beyond suspicion.
291 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 9, 2025
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November 11, 2025
Thank you @booksforwardpr for the gifted copy
TITLE: A Spy Inside the Castle
AUTHOR: M.B. Courtenay
PUB DATE: 12.09.2025
Brilliant, chilling, and utterly original
A Spy Inside the Castle by M.B. Courtenay is one of those rare espionage novels that doesn’t just entertain, it unsettles you in the best possible way. Imagine the slow-burn psychological tension of le Carré fused with the eerie futurism of Black Mirror, and you’re still only halfway there.
Ethan Briar, the haunted intelligence analyst at the heart of the story, is pulled into a web of secrets on the mist-shrouded Isle of Skye. What begins as a hunt for a mole quickly unravels into something much deeper: a meditation on truth, technology, and the price of loyalty.
Castlemartin Manor itself feels like a character. It is a decaying fortress pulsing with memories, lies, and the ghost of an abandoned supercomputer that might know more than any human ever should.
Courtenay writes with the precision of a codebreaker and the lyricism of a poet. Every chapter tightens the screws a little more, blurring the line between man and machine, justice and control, faith and paranoia. It’s a book that lingers long after the final page, forcing you to ask yourself what kind of world we’re building, and who’s really pulling the strings.
If you love espionage with brains and soul, think Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets Ex Machina,
this is a must-read debut.
A Spy Inside the Castle is haunting, cerebral, and impossible to put down.
TITLE: A Spy Inside the Castle
AUTHOR: M.B. Courtenay
PUB DATE: 12.09.2025
Brilliant, chilling, and utterly original
A Spy Inside the Castle by M.B. Courtenay is one of those rare espionage novels that doesn’t just entertain, it unsettles you in the best possible way. Imagine the slow-burn psychological tension of le Carré fused with the eerie futurism of Black Mirror, and you’re still only halfway there.
Ethan Briar, the haunted intelligence analyst at the heart of the story, is pulled into a web of secrets on the mist-shrouded Isle of Skye. What begins as a hunt for a mole quickly unravels into something much deeper: a meditation on truth, technology, and the price of loyalty.
Castlemartin Manor itself feels like a character. It is a decaying fortress pulsing with memories, lies, and the ghost of an abandoned supercomputer that might know more than any human ever should.
Courtenay writes with the precision of a codebreaker and the lyricism of a poet. Every chapter tightens the screws a little more, blurring the line between man and machine, justice and control, faith and paranoia. It’s a book that lingers long after the final page, forcing you to ask yourself what kind of world we’re building, and who’s really pulling the strings.
If you love espionage with brains and soul, think Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets Ex Machina,
this is a must-read debut.
A Spy Inside the Castle is haunting, cerebral, and impossible to put down.
December 20, 2025
How much of what we do and say every day is controlled, or at least influenced? Does power control our lives? If not, what does? Can we view the lens of history through the lens of power? Author M.B. Courtenay clearly admires the orchestration of power. Let me introduce the power of history: we all feel occasionally that our lives are being pulled along on strings like wood puppets. Are there puppet masters? Or are the strings simply influenced by our shared human society, built from the rock of thousands of years of human progress? In M.B. Courtenay’s novel, this idea is described as The Labyrinth, where the shadows of power order the world and where wars are written before they begin. The Stage of History is set, and the players only read their lines.
“A Spy Inside the Castle” is described as an espionage thriller, but in reality that just gets us in the door. Once we follow all our favorite white rabbits through the door, what appears is not the typical Tom Clancy plot of the 90s, but an entirely new actioner mixed with the most absorbing bits of Michael Crichton techno science, Isaac Asimov psychohistory, and Gothic parlor horror. We all feel the weight of history: the many-generational building of civilization, the foundational web of human society, the heavy expectation of living up to the works of our ancestors. Far from standing on the shoulders of giants, we feel like giants are standing on our shoulders. “A Spy Inside the Castle” plays with this thought, stroking it like an instrument: “a conspiracy older than empires” is how a powerful cabal is described in M.B. Courtenay’s genre-bending work. And this conspiracy takes us into a wonderland of history and future histories, the phantoms of today and yesterday, and the shadow play of the world stage.
The story stars a government intelligence agent named Ethan Briar. But this is not James Bond: Ethan begins as an everyman simply trying to do his best job and rise in the ranks of the government. Like all of us he wants to climb the ladder and get all the money and accolades that brings (in his case his job is to predict world-changing geopolitical events), but we see he’s a bit too hungry, and in an effort to impress and outshine his competitors he trips headlong into an “Enemy of the State” situation, with rival spies breathing down his back and his life in sudden danger. What I love best about Courtenay’s storytelling here is while many authors would propel this spy plot through an entire book series, Courtenay uses this setup, “Matrix”-like, only as Act One in Book One.
The world that Ethan lives is a world of state secrets, and his particular talents analyze the inevitabilities of the world, predicting them as a computer would, with economic tides filling the equation rather than ones and zeroes. And while we might get shivers of memory from Hari Seldon in “Foundation,” the story takes a decidedly exhilarating turn for fantasy and sci-fi fans. As Ethan gets hounded by forces unknown for flying too close to the sun, his agency handlers send him on a special mission, to a place truly unique in the annals of fantasy literature: the doom-specter haunted castle on a cliff called Castlemartin.
Yes, I said haunted castle. No, It’s not the kind of haunted castle you think. For within the Gothic spires of Castlemartin lie ghosts, yes, not in the form of transparent ghouls but rather the inhabiting of the minds of its current residents by their respective famous ancestors. And what causes this chilling condition is a grand science machine called ARCLIGHT, a deus ex machina that uses quantum computing to virtually recreate the past in exact detail, and in some cases directly predict the future. It’s Ethan’s dream on full display: the ability to predict human actions in exact detail. But of course, the power of the gods always comes with risks, as all deals with the divine do: a counteractive thousand year-old terrorist group called Der Kreis, the desire for every intelligence agency on earth to steal this godlike power, and of course the wandering of an ancestor’s soul and memory into the body of the player.
“A Spy Inside the Castle” combines Bond-esque secret spy action, the plot of a techno-thriller, the mystery of a haunted castle story, and the what-if of a grand god-like science machine. It carries a multi-century history of geopolitics, a glimpse into the terrifying near future of scientific frontiers, and the opening of a world of shining possibilities for future books in the series. Highly recommended.
“A Spy Inside the Castle” is described as an espionage thriller, but in reality that just gets us in the door. Once we follow all our favorite white rabbits through the door, what appears is not the typical Tom Clancy plot of the 90s, but an entirely new actioner mixed with the most absorbing bits of Michael Crichton techno science, Isaac Asimov psychohistory, and Gothic parlor horror. We all feel the weight of history: the many-generational building of civilization, the foundational web of human society, the heavy expectation of living up to the works of our ancestors. Far from standing on the shoulders of giants, we feel like giants are standing on our shoulders. “A Spy Inside the Castle” plays with this thought, stroking it like an instrument: “a conspiracy older than empires” is how a powerful cabal is described in M.B. Courtenay’s genre-bending work. And this conspiracy takes us into a wonderland of history and future histories, the phantoms of today and yesterday, and the shadow play of the world stage.
The story stars a government intelligence agent named Ethan Briar. But this is not James Bond: Ethan begins as an everyman simply trying to do his best job and rise in the ranks of the government. Like all of us he wants to climb the ladder and get all the money and accolades that brings (in his case his job is to predict world-changing geopolitical events), but we see he’s a bit too hungry, and in an effort to impress and outshine his competitors he trips headlong into an “Enemy of the State” situation, with rival spies breathing down his back and his life in sudden danger. What I love best about Courtenay’s storytelling here is while many authors would propel this spy plot through an entire book series, Courtenay uses this setup, “Matrix”-like, only as Act One in Book One.
The world that Ethan lives is a world of state secrets, and his particular talents analyze the inevitabilities of the world, predicting them as a computer would, with economic tides filling the equation rather than ones and zeroes. And while we might get shivers of memory from Hari Seldon in “Foundation,” the story takes a decidedly exhilarating turn for fantasy and sci-fi fans. As Ethan gets hounded by forces unknown for flying too close to the sun, his agency handlers send him on a special mission, to a place truly unique in the annals of fantasy literature: the doom-specter haunted castle on a cliff called Castlemartin.
Yes, I said haunted castle. No, It’s not the kind of haunted castle you think. For within the Gothic spires of Castlemartin lie ghosts, yes, not in the form of transparent ghouls but rather the inhabiting of the minds of its current residents by their respective famous ancestors. And what causes this chilling condition is a grand science machine called ARCLIGHT, a deus ex machina that uses quantum computing to virtually recreate the past in exact detail, and in some cases directly predict the future. It’s Ethan’s dream on full display: the ability to predict human actions in exact detail. But of course, the power of the gods always comes with risks, as all deals with the divine do: a counteractive thousand year-old terrorist group called Der Kreis, the desire for every intelligence agency on earth to steal this godlike power, and of course the wandering of an ancestor’s soul and memory into the body of the player.
“A Spy Inside the Castle” combines Bond-esque secret spy action, the plot of a techno-thriller, the mystery of a haunted castle story, and the what-if of a grand god-like science machine. It carries a multi-century history of geopolitics, a glimpse into the terrifying near future of scientific frontiers, and the opening of a world of shining possibilities for future books in the series. Highly recommended.
November 12, 2025
A Spy Inside The Castle, M.B. Courtenay, author
Ethan Briar’s claim to fame is that he sees patterns. He is good at predicting future events based on them. He can recognize danger and often sees through the charade people often project about themselves. While giving a speech for SOVERINT, the counterintelligence company for which he works, he warns the world of coming danger. Incredibly, the leader of Germany, Armin Frei is assassinated during his speech, and suddenly Ethan is in the crosshairs of the investigation. Did he know it was going to happen? It seems that the President of the United States, James Dalton, was supposed to be in Germany with Frei, but he was a no-show. No one knows exactly why he did not go, so the questions fly. Did someone know what was going to happen and prevent him from going? Is Russia behind the murder? Is there a sinister plot afoot to take down world leaders?
When Ethan is presented with an offer he cannot refuse, to join Nightshade and find the existence of the possible mole that revealed information leading to Frei’s murder, he agrees and travels to Castlemartin, on the Isle of Skye, to try and ferret out the answers to the question of who is compromising the world’s national security and why. When Ethan arrives at the manor house, it seems like it is out of a Victorian novel. He meets an odd cast of characters, some who claim to have a history that goes back to the 1500’s. There is definitely a feeling of otherworldliness in some of them. One seems to have risen from the past and claims to have lived for centuries. Another sleepwalks. Another is the daughter of Nigel Carlisle, the man whose spirit is embedded into ARCLIGHT, a super computer that can predict the future with accuracy. He is also the man whose book, “The Order of Power” is the bible of the way the world operates. His popular theory is that we are all in a closed labyrinth, and it grows and changes as necessary. If something is eliminated, it returns in another form. We may feel that we are altering events, but we are just putting them on pause. There is a pattern for everything and a plan that exists that is unalterable and will continue. Is this idea welcomed or adhered to by all?
Ethan is introduced to the mind-altering world of ARCLIGHT and realizes he is in danger.
We are introduced to a world of codenames, Venom, Snowdrop, Foxglove, Revenant, Architect, Imperialist and more. There are so many questions. What is Der Kreis? Who is Faust? Who is Lucian? Who is Revenant? Who is malevolent? What is The Vehm? Who is trustworthy? It is really hard to determine where there is safety. Who is the enemy or how many enemies are there? People are sacrificed for the cause with or without reason or guilt.
Is it possible to destroy ARCLIGHT? Does it need to be destroyed? Is it predicting the future or determining it? Are we all merely puppets inside the labyrinth? The conclusion is a little open-ended which makes way for the next book in the series. Is the war between Arclight and Der Kreis or Carlisle and Faust over? Are there still enemies afoot?
The book is really confusing with words I really didn’t understand and concepts that were beyond my ability to flush out. I suspect so much was included in this first of the series to try and draw the reader into the mystery for the next book when some of the ideas will be further explained. I kept reading hoping it would become a bit clearer in this book, but to be honest, I was confused even when the novel ended. The only thing I was fully sure of was the need for the next book because the world was still in danger from what lurks in the darkest corners of our minds. I believe the main concept is that we are all in the labyrinth, but we are being controlled within it. Who is controlling it, that is the question? Once in the labyrinth, there is no escape. It self-perpetuates, morphing into whatever it needs to be at any given time. The person who controls the patterns in the labyrinth has all the power. Are there dark forces in power? I am not sure if I understood the book’s message, but I would still recommend it because there may be many more books to come in the series that will explain the questions I have now. The confusion could very well be the concept of the carrot and the stick!
Ethan Briar’s claim to fame is that he sees patterns. He is good at predicting future events based on them. He can recognize danger and often sees through the charade people often project about themselves. While giving a speech for SOVERINT, the counterintelligence company for which he works, he warns the world of coming danger. Incredibly, the leader of Germany, Armin Frei is assassinated during his speech, and suddenly Ethan is in the crosshairs of the investigation. Did he know it was going to happen? It seems that the President of the United States, James Dalton, was supposed to be in Germany with Frei, but he was a no-show. No one knows exactly why he did not go, so the questions fly. Did someone know what was going to happen and prevent him from going? Is Russia behind the murder? Is there a sinister plot afoot to take down world leaders?
When Ethan is presented with an offer he cannot refuse, to join Nightshade and find the existence of the possible mole that revealed information leading to Frei’s murder, he agrees and travels to Castlemartin, on the Isle of Skye, to try and ferret out the answers to the question of who is compromising the world’s national security and why. When Ethan arrives at the manor house, it seems like it is out of a Victorian novel. He meets an odd cast of characters, some who claim to have a history that goes back to the 1500’s. There is definitely a feeling of otherworldliness in some of them. One seems to have risen from the past and claims to have lived for centuries. Another sleepwalks. Another is the daughter of Nigel Carlisle, the man whose spirit is embedded into ARCLIGHT, a super computer that can predict the future with accuracy. He is also the man whose book, “The Order of Power” is the bible of the way the world operates. His popular theory is that we are all in a closed labyrinth, and it grows and changes as necessary. If something is eliminated, it returns in another form. We may feel that we are altering events, but we are just putting them on pause. There is a pattern for everything and a plan that exists that is unalterable and will continue. Is this idea welcomed or adhered to by all?
Ethan is introduced to the mind-altering world of ARCLIGHT and realizes he is in danger.
We are introduced to a world of codenames, Venom, Snowdrop, Foxglove, Revenant, Architect, Imperialist and more. There are so many questions. What is Der Kreis? Who is Faust? Who is Lucian? Who is Revenant? Who is malevolent? What is The Vehm? Who is trustworthy? It is really hard to determine where there is safety. Who is the enemy or how many enemies are there? People are sacrificed for the cause with or without reason or guilt.
Is it possible to destroy ARCLIGHT? Does it need to be destroyed? Is it predicting the future or determining it? Are we all merely puppets inside the labyrinth? The conclusion is a little open-ended which makes way for the next book in the series. Is the war between Arclight and Der Kreis or Carlisle and Faust over? Are there still enemies afoot?
The book is really confusing with words I really didn’t understand and concepts that were beyond my ability to flush out. I suspect so much was included in this first of the series to try and draw the reader into the mystery for the next book when some of the ideas will be further explained. I kept reading hoping it would become a bit clearer in this book, but to be honest, I was confused even when the novel ended. The only thing I was fully sure of was the need for the next book because the world was still in danger from what lurks in the darkest corners of our minds. I believe the main concept is that we are all in the labyrinth, but we are being controlled within it. Who is controlling it, that is the question? Once in the labyrinth, there is no escape. It self-perpetuates, morphing into whatever it needs to be at any given time. The person who controls the patterns in the labyrinth has all the power. Are there dark forces in power? I am not sure if I understood the book’s message, but I would still recommend it because there may be many more books to come in the series that will explain the questions I have now. The confusion could very well be the concept of the carrot and the stick!
November 26, 2025
Le Carré meets Black Mirror: I signed up for espionage and ended up trapped in a crumbling Scottish manor with a sentient supercomputer. 🤯
From the moment Ethan Briar stepped onto that windswept island, I knew I was in trouble. Not because I feared for his life though I definitely did, but because within ten pages I had already started side-eyeing every character, every encrypted file, every flickering lightbulb. M.B. Courtenay really said: *trust no one, not even yourself.*
Ethan’s assignment starts simple to investigate an abandoned surveillance program but the deeper he digs, the more the walls of Castlemartin Manor seem to whisper, oh honey, you’re already too late. There’s a defector hinting at betrayal, a supercomputer that feels suspiciously sentient, and enough political double-speak to make me want to carry my own personal firewall everywhere I go.
The whole thing feels like le Carré wandered into a Black Mirror set, spilled coffee on the control panel, and said “eh, let’s roll with it.” It’s cerebral, twisty, and somehow both chilly and electric at the same time. And poor Ethan every time he thinks he’s uncovered the truth, the truth turns into a hologram and sprints off in the opposite direction.
By the time the storm hits its peak, I was basically pacing my living room whispering don’t trust the machine, don't trust the humans you know what, trust nothing. The battle between memory and manipulation, faith and cynicism, human instinct and machine prediction all converges in this deliciously eerie, high-stakes crescendo.
Did I see the final reveal coming? Absolutely not. Did I audibly gasp as if someone had unplugged my supercomputer? Yes. Loudly.
✨️Bottom line: If you want a cerebral spy thriller that forces you to question reality, morality, and whether your phone is secretly judging you, A Spy Inside the Castle by M.B. Courtenay delivers big-time!
⚡️Thank you Castlemartin and M.B. Courtenay for sharing this book with me!
From the moment Ethan Briar stepped onto that windswept island, I knew I was in trouble. Not because I feared for his life though I definitely did, but because within ten pages I had already started side-eyeing every character, every encrypted file, every flickering lightbulb. M.B. Courtenay really said: *trust no one, not even yourself.*
Ethan’s assignment starts simple to investigate an abandoned surveillance program but the deeper he digs, the more the walls of Castlemartin Manor seem to whisper, oh honey, you’re already too late. There’s a defector hinting at betrayal, a supercomputer that feels suspiciously sentient, and enough political double-speak to make me want to carry my own personal firewall everywhere I go.
The whole thing feels like le Carré wandered into a Black Mirror set, spilled coffee on the control panel, and said “eh, let’s roll with it.” It’s cerebral, twisty, and somehow both chilly and electric at the same time. And poor Ethan every time he thinks he’s uncovered the truth, the truth turns into a hologram and sprints off in the opposite direction.
By the time the storm hits its peak, I was basically pacing my living room whispering don’t trust the machine, don't trust the humans you know what, trust nothing. The battle between memory and manipulation, faith and cynicism, human instinct and machine prediction all converges in this deliciously eerie, high-stakes crescendo.
Did I see the final reveal coming? Absolutely not. Did I audibly gasp as if someone had unplugged my supercomputer? Yes. Loudly.
✨️Bottom line: If you want a cerebral spy thriller that forces you to question reality, morality, and whether your phone is secretly judging you, A Spy Inside the Castle by M.B. Courtenay delivers big-time!
⚡️Thank you Castlemartin and M.B. Courtenay for sharing this book with me!
December 6, 2025
📚A Spy Inside the Castle
✍🏻M.B.Courtenay
Blurb:
le Carré meets Black Mirror in this cerebral espionage thriller about secrets, power, and the cost of truth.
When intelligence analyst Ethan Briar is drawn into a covert mission on the windswept Isle of Skye, he enters a world where nothing is as it seems. An abandoned supercomputer, a defector's warning, and the specter of a long-buried betrayal set the stage for a high-stakes investigation with global implications.
At Castlemartin Manor-a decaying stronghold for a once-cutting-edge surveillance program-Ethan is forced to navigate shifting loyalties, encrypted legacies, and the labyrinthine politics of modern intelligence. As the storm outside intensifies, so does the war between faith and cynicism, memory and manipulation, human judgment and machine prediction.
Gripping, intelligent, and hauntingly prescient, A Spy Inside the Castle explores the intersection of technology and truth in an age where perception is weaponized-and no one is beyond suspicion.
My Thoughts:
A Spy Inside the Castle is an interesting well told story. a fast-paced political/crime novel. It is part political thriller set in 2022 involving NATO, Russia, and Ukraine where the U.S. President is incompetent and is controlled by a secret group within the government. It is a classic mole hunt story within the U.S. intelligence agencies, but is has other genres woven into it. The story seems part science fiction with a quantum computer located in a castle in the U.K. run by the U.S. that seems to have the ability foretell the future. There is the author and his book describing a historical group that has controlled history without being the kings, queens, dictators,
Thanks NetGalley, Castlemartin and Author M.B. Courtenay for the advanced copy of "A Spy Inside the Castle" I am leaving my voluntary review in appreciation.
#NetGalley
#Castlemartin
#M.B.Courtenay
#ASpyInsidetheCastle
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
✍🏻M.B.Courtenay
Blurb:
le Carré meets Black Mirror in this cerebral espionage thriller about secrets, power, and the cost of truth.
When intelligence analyst Ethan Briar is drawn into a covert mission on the windswept Isle of Skye, he enters a world where nothing is as it seems. An abandoned supercomputer, a defector's warning, and the specter of a long-buried betrayal set the stage for a high-stakes investigation with global implications.
At Castlemartin Manor-a decaying stronghold for a once-cutting-edge surveillance program-Ethan is forced to navigate shifting loyalties, encrypted legacies, and the labyrinthine politics of modern intelligence. As the storm outside intensifies, so does the war between faith and cynicism, memory and manipulation, human judgment and machine prediction.
Gripping, intelligent, and hauntingly prescient, A Spy Inside the Castle explores the intersection of technology and truth in an age where perception is weaponized-and no one is beyond suspicion.
My Thoughts:
A Spy Inside the Castle is an interesting well told story. a fast-paced political/crime novel. It is part political thriller set in 2022 involving NATO, Russia, and Ukraine where the U.S. President is incompetent and is controlled by a secret group within the government. It is a classic mole hunt story within the U.S. intelligence agencies, but is has other genres woven into it. The story seems part science fiction with a quantum computer located in a castle in the U.K. run by the U.S. that seems to have the ability foretell the future. There is the author and his book describing a historical group that has controlled history without being the kings, queens, dictators,
Thanks NetGalley, Castlemartin and Author M.B. Courtenay for the advanced copy of "A Spy Inside the Castle" I am leaving my voluntary review in appreciation.
#NetGalley
#Castlemartin
#M.B.Courtenay
#ASpyInsidetheCastle
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
November 12, 2025
“A Spy Inside the Castle” by M. B. Courtenay is an interesting well told story that I enjoyed. I am not sure what category to put this book into. It is part political thriller set in 2022 involving NATO, Russia, and Ukraine where the U.S. President is incompetent and is controlled by a secret group within the government. It is a classic mole hunt story within the U.S. intelligence agencies, but is has other genres woven into it. The story seems part science fiction with a quantum computer located in a castle in the U.K. run by the U.S. that seems to have the ability foretell the future. There is the author and his book describing a historical group that has controlled history without being the kings, queens, dictators, etc. of the time. There are several characters that believe they are current incarnations of historical members of this group playing a similar role as the historic person. One acts as an assassin that kills several people involved in the mole hunt.
December 13, 2025
A Spy Inside the Castle by M.B. Courtenay is an Ethan Briar novel by the author and the first debut in what I hope will be a series. Ethan is our MC who is a former department of state official who is told to get to the town of Castlemartin. The book is a spy/ espionage thriller so there is a lot mentioned in the book about spies and even secret societies! The action is intense! Ethan is a well written character that you can not help but root for and also want to keep reading his story. If you like spy thrillers along the line of The Gray Man series by Mark Greaney you will really want to read this one! The ending with Natalia was emotional and I would love to read more about what happens with her and also with Ethan of course. A highly recommended read!
December 18, 2025
This is a most confusing book, part spy story, part conspiracy pseudo Dan Brown, with part science fiction.DC power brokers, corruption and a search for a traitor.Ancient societies of good and evil battling through the centuries, and a Scottish castle lair with predictive AI.
It was all crammed in, but to me it was all over the place and nowhere, there was no originality, it seemed as though the story was as confused as I was.
Traitors who were not, traitors who were, a secret society, all very incoherent.I read it all and by the end have to admit I really found the finale incredibly unsatisfactory , obviously there is a hope to make this a series of novels, I hope not, 1 was enough for me.
It was all crammed in, but to me it was all over the place and nowhere, there was no originality, it seemed as though the story was as confused as I was.
Traitors who were not, traitors who were, a secret society, all very incoherent.I read it all and by the end have to admit I really found the finale incredibly unsatisfactory , obviously there is a hope to make this a series of novels, I hope not, 1 was enough for me.
December 19, 2025
If you want to read a book and leave it feeling like you could totally be a spy after reading it, definitely pick this one up. This probably comes as no surprise now, but this is definitely a spy novel. It’s almost sci-fi, but also totally realistic; high stakes, technology focused, action novel. If you’re looking for an espionage-type book for a male in your life, I think this could be a great choice for him. The chapters are super short. Each chapter starts with the location and date/time. This book is an “Ethan Briar Novel” (Ethan is the main character), so I’m taking that as a suggestion that there will be more books to come - I know y’all love when you can really dig into an ongoing series! Thank you so much to BooksForward for my copy!
November 2, 2025
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.
The description made it seem like it was right up my alley. Unfortunately I found myself so confused and having to re-read sections trying to figure out what was going on, and who was who, right from the start. I didn't get a true sense of any of the characters. Ultimately DNF'd this before the halfway point.
The description made it seem like it was right up my alley. Unfortunately I found myself so confused and having to re-read sections trying to figure out what was going on, and who was who, right from the start. I didn't get a true sense of any of the characters. Ultimately DNF'd this before the halfway point.
January 12, 2026
Great narration from Grover Gardner
When Ethan lands on the Isle of Skye he knows nothing is as it seems. His job is find out the truth about the abandoned computer system.
A place that is where Ethan has to work his wound who he can trust never mind manipulation and what old computers predictions.
A spy triller that will have you believing one thing and then asking questions. No one is beyond suspicion.
I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.
When Ethan lands on the Isle of Skye he knows nothing is as it seems. His job is find out the truth about the abandoned computer system.
A place that is where Ethan has to work his wound who he can trust never mind manipulation and what old computers predictions.
A spy triller that will have you believing one thing and then asking questions. No one is beyond suspicion.
I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.
October 24, 2025
A stunning genre-bending thriller with a touch of science fiction. "A Spy Inside the Castle", a fast-paced political/crime novel, is sure to keep readers on the edge of their seat. Perfect for fans of James Bond or John le Carré, this is one you will definitely want to pick up!
December 7, 2025
The book overall was very good. The writing was amazing and kept me on my toes. The only thing that made me dislike the book was how slow the beginning of the book was. It started out fast and then slowed down within the next few chapters. But over all a good book.
October 22, 2025
A fantastic read that had me on the edge of my seat. From start to finish, a thrilling and enjoyable read anyone would enjoy!
October 22, 2025
I really enjoyed this novel. Every chapter pulled me more and more into the story. Extremely well written by MB Courtenay.
October 22, 2025
So exciting to read!
October 22, 2025
Thoroughly enjoyed this.
October 22, 2025
Gripping from the start. Ethan serves as both a somewhat friendly guide and mysterious vessel through which the story is delivered. Fantastic!
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