Mike Martin

The Mike Martin novels follow an Arabic-speaking British SAS and intelligence officer whose Iraqi childhood enables him to operate under identities unavailable to most Western agents. Fist of God places Major Martin inside occupied Kuwait and Baghdad during the 1990–91 Gulf crisis, while The Afghan returns to him as an older colonel selected for an extreme impersonation operation against al-Qaeda.

The two books are separated by fifteen years and can be read independently, but both examine the psychological and practical demands of deep cover. Martin must master language, biography, gesture and political loyalties while intelligence officers far from the field decide how much risk and deception are acceptable. Real conflicts and public figures provide the framework, but the missions and principal agents are fictional.