After Double Agent, Sam has left Third Echelon and is living on the run, branded a traitor and quietly working with Grim to expose the moles inside the NSA. Third Echelon sends a team of new Splinter Cells after him, led by a young agent named Ben Hansen, and the chase moves between the hunted man and the people hunting him.
What this adds if you've played the games
Despite the title, this isn't the game's story. It covers part of the gap between Double Agent and Conviction, which the games skip, and shows Sam as a hunted man before he turns up in Malta. Peter Telep, writing as David Michaels, builds it as a chase with chapters from both sides. It's the most useful of the older novels if you want to know what Sam did in those years, though the game never mentions it.
Where it fits
- Read beforeTom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction
Set in the years between Double Agent and the game, it shows Sam on the run before he turns up in Malta. It's a lead-in and spoils nothing in the game.
- Read afterTom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent
The novel starts after Double Agent and takes its ending for granted from the first chapters, so play the game before reading it.
- Ties intoTom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Endgame
Telep's second book retells the Conviction novel's chase from Ben Hansen's side and then carries on past it, so it gives away how that chase ends. Read the Conviction novel first.
Editions
Penguin paperback
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