Little Sister, by Giles O'Bryen

What a quirky little spy novel! The hero is the typically absurd brilliant PhD inventor slash special forces operator now retired and causing stress for the British secret service. The spy masters are believably cast as venal. A prototype device that enables heretofore unimagined levels of surveillance was mistakenly sold to an arms dealer, and our hero goes after it on his own in the clumsiest of ways. Meanwhile, the sales placement person who organized the deal also goes after it, hoping to sell it at a profit to the US NSA. Nothing goes well.

It was a pretty good novel, but not great. If you see it on the sales rack, pick it up for a long airplane ride or for the next time you're in a doctor's waiting room.

Little Sister (A James Palatine Novel Book 1)