The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Johnston, Antony. The Coldest City. Oni Press, May 16, 2012.

The fall of the Berlin Wall marks the end of an era not only in Germany, but also in the spy business in The Coldest City by Antony Johnston. David Perceval, who has been M16’s leading spy in Berlin for years, is shot dead the same night the wall comes down. Superior officers must piece together what happened to Perceval from the story of Lorraine Broughton, a female spy sent into Berlin only days before Perceval’s death. Although Lorraine is sent by M16 to find a list compiled of all active spies in hopes of keeping it out of the hands of the Russians, Lorraine seems to have a mission of her own in mind.

It was after James Gascoine, the second agent in charge in Berlin was killed that Lorraine was employed to travel to Berlin and locate the list it was said that Gascoine had been carrying. The list, said to contain the names of all spies regardless of country, was compiled by a stasi spy with the codename SPYGLASS. It was believed Gascoine had gotten this list from SPYGLASS but no trace of it was found on his body.

In Berlin, Lorraine and Perceval butt heads almost immediately. He does not like that she is a woman and that she has both the intelligence and the nerve to talk back to him. He threatens to send her home several times, especially when she miscopies Gascoine’s passport number when trying to pick up his body so that she postpones leaving Berlin and have longer to search for the list. Perceval talks Lorraine into helping SPYGLASS sneak from East Berlin into West Berlin but SPYGLASS is killed by a sniper. Meanwhile, Lorraine has met a French spy, Lasalle who shows her pictures of Perceval meeting with an assassin, the same man who shot SPYGLASS, before SPYGLASS was killed.

Lasalle tells Lorraine he believes Perceval is the leader of a ring of assassins for hire. It is this supposition that Lorraine takes to her superior officers to explain Perceval’s death. They, however, think that Perceval was a double agent who was working with the Russians, a position that got him killed. With an unexpected twist at the end of the novel, the reader learns just how wrong M16 was about Perceval and Lorraine as well.