Tag Archives: Cold War

#BookReview ‘Gabriel’s Moon’ by William Boyd #spy #thriller

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Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd could actually be titled ‘The Accidental Spy’ because that’s what Gabriel Dax is. What a wonderful spy novel this is, it plays with the idea of mistaken memory, mistaken perceptions and dangerous obsession. A Sixties Cold War thriller wrapped up in stellar writing. I raced through it. William BoydTravel writer Gabriel Dax has a dream singleton’s life. A flat in Chelsea, journalistic assignments taking him around the world, he is the author of three books and has an occasional girlfriend, Lorraine, who provides fun without committment. On location in the Congo, Dax is sent by his editor to do a political interview with the country’s new prime minister. This is unfamiliar territory for Gabriel but he takes the opportunity, hoping it may lead to more work. On the flight home he is surprised, and delighted, to see a fellow passenger reading one of his books. What follows next are a series of events he later realises are not coincidences.
In London he is surprised to see the woman from the plane near his house, but she disappears before he can speak to her. Then on a cold January day he is eating a lonely plate of spaghetti in the Café Matisse when the same woman approaches his table. She introduces herself as Faith Green and says she recognises him as the author of the book she was reading on the plane from Léopoldville. Then she drops two bombshells, that Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister who Gabriel interviewed, is dead. And that she would like him to do ‘us’ a ‘small favour’ as he has done in the past for his brother Sefton, mostly delivering packages. But when Faith says ‘us,’ she means MI6.
The favours that Gabriel undertakes for Faith are always mysterious, taking him to Spain and Poland. Operating on sparse information and cryptic instructions, Gabriel quickly learns to look over his shoulder and to trust his instincts. After each job he pockets the cash and vows never to work for Faith Green again, until the next time she asks. He becomes unable to say no to her, his attraction evolves into obsession.
Woven through Gabriel’s adventures as a reluctant spy are matters closer to home. The death of his mother when he was six in a house fire, from which he escaped, has left him with insomnia and nightmares. So Gabriel starts to see Dr Katerina Haas who recommends anamnesis, the search of facts that aid the return of memory. The family strand of the story encompasses Gabriel’s relationship with his two remaining relatives. His uncle Aldous Dax, who raised Gabriel when he was orphaned, is an art dealer. Older brother Sefton does something unspecified in the Foreign Office. Boyd handles his intricate plotting with a light hand, Gabriel never really knows what is happening and neither does the reader; but it is fun guessing.
William Boyd never disappoints, from cradle to the grave stories such as Any Human Heart, the story of a young pianist in Love is Blind, and a mix of sex and spies in Waiting for Sunrise, he reliably takes you away from the modern world as you sink into the world of his story.
Excellent.

Gabriel’s Moon is first in the Gabriel Dax trilogy. Here’s my review of THE PREDICAMENT, second in the Gabriel Dax trilogy.

Here are my reviews of other books by William Boyd:-
ANY HUMAN HEART
LOVE IS BLIND
NAT TATE: AN AMERICAN ARTIST 1928-1960
ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS
SWEET CARESS
THE BLUE AFTERNOON
THE DREAMS OF BETHANY MELLMOTH
TRIO
WAITING FOR SUNRISE

… and try the first paragraph of ARMADILLO.

If you like this, try these:-
‘Nucleus’ by Rory Clements #2TOMWILDE
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Ekback
‘The Traitor’ by Ava Glass #2ALIASEMMA

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#BookReview GABRIEL’S MOON by William Boyd https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8n5 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- William Boyd

#BookReview ‘The Partisan’ by Patrick Worrall #thriller #ColdWar #spy

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The key protagonist in The Partisan by Patrick Worrall is a female Lithuanian resistance fighter who becomes a Cold War assassin. How nice to read a thriller set in the Baltic States, a fresh take on war and how to survive it. At the heart of the story is Greta, the partisan. I admired her, and feared her. Patrick WorrallAn ambitious timeline ranges from the Spanish Civil War to the Sixties Cold War as Greta turns from wartime fighting, one of the Three Sisters, to post-war vengeance tracking down the war criminals on her list and eliminating them. Greta’s story intersects in 1963 with Yulia and Michael, Soviet and English teenage chess champions respectively, and a Soviet plot to win the Cold War. The 1963 chess sub-plot got in the way. Greta is the fascinating character, I wanted to read about her. Her story is thrilling enough.
I couldn’t help but wonder if a more limited reach would help the story’s rhythm. The story jumps around a bit. In the first half I would prefer spending longer with each character to understand them, before the pace picks up as tension rises and point of view gets snappier. I wanted to read about Greta’s story in one long narrative thread instead of a timeline jumping between 1940s and 1963. I particularly enjoyed Greta’s interviews with journalist Indrė in 2004 and was unable to get beyond the jumping around when I wanted to settle in with one character. The character list is long with many similar names to remember – who is on which side, who is double-crossing who – and this took me out of the story.
I’m always partial to a good thriller and like to find debut authors, so I’ll be watching out for the next book from Patrick Worrall. It’s different, try it.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Diamond Eye’ by Kate Quinn
‘A Hero in France’ by Alan Furst
‘V2’ by Robert Harris

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE PARTISAN by Patrick Worrall https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5T8 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Museum of Broken Promises’ by @elizabethbuchan #thriller #spy

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The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan is a disjointed story of Cold War romance and its lingering after-effects decades later. Promises are made and broken, by everyone. The title is misleading, as the sections at the museum in present day in Paris act as bookends to the crucial story in Eighties story in Czechoslovakia. Elizabeth BuchanIt is 1985, Prague. After the death of her father, student Laure takes a job as an au pair in Paris moving to Prague with her employers. It is the Cold War and the once beautiful city is shabby and grey, an unsettling place to live where the threat of imprisonment or violence always lingers. Laure cares for two small children while their father Petr works, he is an official at a pharmaceuticals company and in a privileged position enabling him to bring a foreigner to work in the country, and their mother Eva is ill. Gradually Laure explores the streets and finds a marionette theatre. There she is enchanted by the folklore tales of the puppets; and she meets Tomas, lead singer in a rock band.
Resistance against the repressive regime in Czechoslovakia is low key, expressed through the arts. In this way, the book reminded me of Tom Stoppard’s play Rock and Roll which tells the story of rock band The Plastic People of the Universe. The Museum of Broken Promises is a story of a young student who falls in love with a bad boy who describes himself as a ‘rock soldier making war on the party’. But these words – soldier, war – are used in a student resistance sense, not actual war. This is quiet resistance rather than terrorism, but is none the weaker for this. Songs and marionettes can spread important messages of defiance, as Laure finds  when she goes to a rock concert. Singing and dancing can be subversive. As someone says, it is ‘giving into forbidden yearning and loyalties. Tasting resistance like wine on the tongue’. Laure’s time in Prague echoes throughout her later life and leads her to open her museum in Paris, inviting mementoes from strangers, objects that represent broken promises.
The Museum of Broken Promises is a slow moving contemplative story, without the pace of a thriller despite its Cold War setting and the constant threat to anyone who speaks or behaves out of turn. This lack of propulsion makes it seem a longer book than it is and I wanted it to have some bite. The story moves back and forth from Prague to Paris and more than once I wasn’t sure where Laure was. This adds to the sense that nothing is what it seems.
Laure is an innocent who is sometimes stupidly naïve, unknowingly putting other people in danger. It is an example of the idealism and irreverence of youth ignoring advice. As she is warned on her arrival in Prague, don’t ask questions, don’t answer questions.

If you like this, try:-
‘If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘The Bone Church’ by Victoria Dougherty
‘Hangover Square’ by Patrick Hamilton

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN PROMISES by @elizabethbuchan https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4sA via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Exposure’ by Helen Dunmore #thriller #spy

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Exposure is a powerful novel by Helen Dunmore about the effect of the Cold War on one family, thrilling yet subtle. One night in 1960, Simon Callington’s colleague falls and breaks a leg. He rings Simon and asks him to go to his flat, retrieve a document he had taken home from work, and return it to their office. And so begins a tale of official secrets, spies, cover-ups, all told through the prism of this one family, the Callingtons. Helen DunmoreThis is not a traditional spy novel, there are no car chases or killings, but it is taut with tension and threat felt within the routine domesticity of Callingtons’ home. The impact of Giles’s plea for help, and Simon’s subsequent actions, changes everyone’s lives. They are living in a time of secrets and suspicion. Lily, Simon’s wife, is a German Jew brought to England by her mother before the Second World War. As a child, Lily was taught by her mother to fit in with the English, to hide her foreignness. Her life is one of secrets and covering up, when suddenly it becomes real; her husband is accused of espionage, of passing secrets to the Russians. Lily is convinced he is innocent but her instinct is to protect her children, even though she is unsure who the enemy is.
The story unfolds quickly, alternating between Simon and Lily’s viewpoints while from Giles we learn secrets of which Lily is unaware. And all the time, the three Callington children see and listen and understand more than their mother can expect.
Excellent. Helen Dunmore is a go-to author for me, whose hardback books I buy to keep and re-read.

Read my reviews of two other novels by Helen Dunmore:-
BIRDCAGE WALK
THE LIE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Diamond Eye’ by Kate Quinn
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brooke
‘After the Bombing’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview EXPOSURE by Helen Dunmore http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1SI via @SandraDanby