Spring 1958: a mysterious individual believed to be high up in the Polish secret service began passing Soviet secrets to the West.

His name was Michal Goleniewski and he remains one of the most important, yet least known and most misunderstood spies of the Cold War. Even his death is shrouded in mystery and he has been written out of the history of Cold War espionage - until now.

Tim Tate draws on a wealth of previously-unpublished primary source documents to tell the dramatic true story of the best spy the west ever lost - of how Goleniewski exposed hundreds of KGB agents operating undercover in the West; from George Blake and the ''Portland Spy Ring'', to a senior Swedish Air Force and NATO officer and a traitor inside the Israeli government. The information he produced devastated intelligence services on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Bringing together love and loyalty, courage and treachery, betrayal, greed and, ultimately, insanity, here is the extraordinary true story of one of the most significant but little known spies of the Cold War.

Acclaim for The Spy Who Was Left Out in the Cold:
''Totally gripping . . . a masterpiece. Tate lifts the lid on one of the most important and complex spies of the Cold War, who passed secrets to the West and finally unmasked traitor George Blake.''
HELEN FRY, author of MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two

''A wonderful and at times mind-boggling account of a bizarre and almost forgotten spy - right up to the time when he''s living undercover in Queens, New York and claiming to be the last of the Romanoffs.''
SIMON KUPER, author of The Happy Traitor

''A highly readable and thoroughly researched account of one of the Cold War''s most intriguing and tragic spy stories.'' OWEN MATTHEWS, author of An Impeccable Spy