Taiwan, 2027. The chips that keep Europe running stop coming off the line. Out in the strait, a seventy-two-hour countdown begins.A coordinated cyberattack shuts down the semiconductor plants of Hsinchu and Tainan. Within hours, assembly lines across half a continent grind to a halt, markets crash, and warships begin to draw a naval blockade around the island.Álex Lin-Vargas is a Spanish intelligence officer stationed in Taipei: the son of a Chinese mother and a Basque father, useful to everyone and fully loyal to no one. His orders are to find out what really happened. He thinks he is chasing an act of sabotage. What he finds is far worse: a Swiss company selling the same strategic designs to both sides of the conflict.As the CIA, MI6, the Mossad, and Chinese intelligence make their moves, Álex has to decide whom to trust: a British counterintelligence analyst, a Taiwanese prosecutor who is risking her career, and a corporate executive who claims she wants to expose the scheme from the inside… or who may be the one running it. And six thousand miles away, in Barcelona, someone makes sure he remembers that his mother is within easy reach.Seventy-two hours to stop a warA realistic espionage thriller about the global chip war and Europe's fragile dependence on it.A hero torn between two cultures, two loyalties, and a family in danger.Spy agencies, cleanrooms, darkened ports, and a narrow stretch of sea where a single mistake could set the century on fire.The Strait is the first novel in the Álex Lin-Vargas series: a story of technology, betrayal, and the cost of choosing a side when none of them are clean anymore. Read more
