Tag: blogtour

#BlogTour #BookReview #Ad No Place To Hide by JS Monroe

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BLOG TOUR BANNER no place to hideWelcome to the final day of the blog tour for No Place To Hide by JS Monroe. My thanks to Sophie at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Head of Zeus for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do check out the review by my tour buddy for today, Bookstagrammer wendyreadsbooks.

No Place To HideAbout the Book

You can shut the doors.

Adam lives a picture-perfect life: happy marriage, two young children, and a flourishing career as a doctor. But Adam also lives with a secret. Hospital CCTV, strangers’ mobile phones, city traffic cameras – he is convinced that they are watching him, recording his every move. All because of something terrible that happened at a drunken party when he was a student.

You can close the blinds.

Only two other people knew what happened that night. Two people he’s long left behind. Until one of them, Clio – Adam’s great unrequited love – turns up on his doorstep, and reignites a sinister pact twenty-four years in the making…

But once it begins, there’ll be no place to hide.

Format: eARC (384 pages)              Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 13th April 2023 Genre: Thriller

Find No Place To Hide on Goodreads

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My Review

Inspired by Christopher Marlowe’s play, Doctor Faustus, No Place to Hide explores the consequences of a bargain entered into with a fellow student many years before which turns out to be akin to a pact with the Devil of Marlowe’s play. Okay, so Adam doesn’t quite get twenty four years of ‘absolute knowledge and infinite power’ in exchange for his soul but he does get a successful career as a consultant paediatrician, untarnished by any whiff of scandal associated with the tragic event that occurred at a party whilst he was a medical student. Until, that it is, the person he entered into the agreement with decides it’s time to claim his prize.

Alternating between Adam’s time at college in 1998 and the present day, we get a keen sense of his increasing paranoia as he begins to believe he is being secretly filmed, and not just by someone with a camera, but by all the surveillence technology we see (or perhaps don’t see) around us. It puts a strain on his marriage, especially when the intrusion comes a little too close to home, threatening the safety of his young family as well as his career.

Having commenced with a theatrical performance – Adam’s starring role in Doctor Faustus – it’s fitting that the book’s closing scenes are full of melodrama. I liked how the author keeps Adam, and through him the reader, constantly unsure about who to trust. For instance, is Clio, the object of Adam’s unconsummated student lust, a willing accessory or an innocent pawn in a devilish game? This is particularly cleverly done when it comes to Ji, Adam’s friend from university who has progressed from video game addict to technology supremo.

The book’s equivalent of Hell is the so-called ‘dark web’ which turns out to be a very dark place indeed, the stuff of nightmares in fact. Adam’s adversary is not perhaps Marlowe’s Devil, the incarnation of pure evil, but a manipulative, damaged individual with demons of his own, and a very particular motive for tormenting Adam.

No Place to Hide is a skilfully crafted, thought-provoking thriller that is also an unsettling insight into the extent to which technology, and surveillence technology in particular, has become part of our everyday lives and the capacity for its misuse. Maybe you haven’t noticed how many security cameras there are in your high street or local shopping centre? You probably will after reading this.

In three words: Compelling, intense, dark

J S MonroeAbout the Author

JS Monroe read English at Cambridge, worked as a foreign correspondent in Delhi, and was Weekend editor of the Daily Telegraph in London before becoming a full-time writer. His psychological thriller, Find Me, became a bestseller in 2017, and has since been translated into 14 languages. Writing under the name Jon Stock, he is also the author of five spy thrillers. He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford, and lives in Wiltshire wirh his wife, Hilary Stock, a fine art photographer. They have three children.

Connect with J. S. Monroe
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#BlogTour #BookReview #Ad The Spy Across the Water by James Naughtie @AriesFiction

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The Spy Across the Water BLOG TOUR BANNER_tsatwWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Spy Across the Water by James Naughtie. My thanks to Andrew at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

The Spy Across the WaterAbout the Book

We live with our history, but it can kill us.

Faces from the past appear from nowhere at a family funeral, and Will Flemyng, spy-turned-ambassador, is drawn into twin mysteries that threaten everything he holds dear.

From Washington, he’s pitched back into the Troubles in Northern Ireland and an explosive secret hidden deep in the most dangerous but fulfilling friendship he has known.

And while he confronts shadowy adversaries in American streets, and looks for solace at home in the Scottish Highlands, he discovers that his government’s most precious Cold War agent is in mortal danger and needs his help to survive.

In an electric story of courage and betrayal, Flemyng learns the truth that his life has left him a man with many friends, but still alone.

Format: Hardback (416 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 2nd March 2023 Genre: Thriller

Find The Spy Across the Water on Goodreads

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Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

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My Review

The Spy Across the Water is the third instalment in James Naughtie’s spy series featuring the three Flemyng brothers – Will, Abel and Mungo.  In fact, we’re down to two brothers now which is not a spoiler because Abel’s funeral is the opening scene in the book. However, the circumstances, if not the place, of Abel’s death are still a mystery, something Will is determined to discover more about. When he does it forms one of the threads of an intricately woven tapestry that is the hallmark of all good spy thrillers.

Set in 1985, the story is fiction (as the author points out in the Foreword) but the historical events which form the background to it are real, namely the tentative and secret discussions between the British and Irish governments aimed at reaching a settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland, the so-called Troubles.  The tensions between those in the Republican movement willing to consider a negotiated settlement and those who are determined to continue the armed struggle are incorporated into the storyline as Will’s past intelligence role and the connections he made during that period come back to haunt him.

I’m not quite sure how I managed to miss the earlier books in the series because this sort of spy thriller is right up my street. The fact I hadn’t read the previous two books didn’t stop me enjoying this one although tantalising references to events in the earlier books – Paris in the summer of 1968, a puzzling death and an affair that destroyed one of Will’s colleagues – made me wish I’d discovered the series at its beginning.

The comparison to the novels of John le Carré is spot on, particularly when it comes to the storyline involving the possibility that the identity of a Soviet agent working for the British, who has been supplying intelligence material that is ‘gold dust’, has been discovered by the Americans, possibly by a mole at the heart of US intelligence.  We’re in real Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy territory here with Will Flemyng’s protege, Patrick Keane, fulfilling the Peter Guillam role in that book.  And if we’re looking for more comparisons there’s James Jesus Angleton (a real life figure), convinced there’s a conspiracy around every corner, who made me think of Control’s feverish search for the identity of the Circus mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As a former comrade of Will’s recalls, ‘He was getting more and more obssessive about penetration – disappearing into his files for weeks on end, the blinds down in his eyrie and no one allowed near.’

I liked how Will, secretive by nature as well as the possessor of secrets, feeds Keane just enough snippets of information so that Keane has to figure things out for himself. Keane also does the legwork and takes the risks that Will no longer can because of his role as Ambassador, although you get the impression he’d quite like to if the chance arose.  The team is completed by Lucy, one of the few people who can read Will’s moods and second guess his next move. If I’m being picky I’d have liked a bigger role for her than preparing papers, organising flights and booking hotel rooms. And I’d love to know more about Will’s relationship with his wife and children who at this point are back in London.

Some of my favourite parts of the book were those set in Altnabuie, the Flemyng family home in Perthshire, Scotland currently occupied by Will’s older brother, Mungo. I loved the descriptions of Mungo’s daily tramps and the local scenery which (sorry, another comparison coming) reminded me of the writing of John Buchan, also a Perthshire man.  ‘The tapestry had light and shade, the dark foliage of the pines and spruce in the wood standing out against the vivid greens and yellows on the hillside. The water on the loch was swept with sun, then blackened again when the lines of light disappeared.’ When Mungo’s peaceful life appears threatened, Will has even more incentive to get to the bottom of things and to find the link between a number of seemingly unconnected events, a link that tantalisingly eludes him for quite a while.

The Spy Across the Water is a terrific spy thriller whose intricate plot will keep you on your toes.  You get the clear sense the author’s experience as a BBC correspondent has helped the story’s feeling of authenticity, especially the detail of Washington political manouverings and rivalries. But it’s also a story of friendship against the odds and the compromises that have to be made between duty and personal relationships.

In three words: Gripping, intricate, suspenseful

Naughtie, JamesAbout the Author

James Naughtie is a special correspondent for BBC News, for which he has reported around the world. He presented Today on BBC Radio 4 for 21 years. On the Road: Adventures from Nixon to Trump is an account of five decades of travel and work in the United States. This is his third novel. He lives in Edinburgh and London.

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