Tag: espionage

Book Review – Cold Sunset by William Boyd @VikingBooksUk

whatcathyreadnext2 Comments

About the Book

Gabriel Dax is on route to Russia, tasked with delivering a mysterious Blanco drawing to celebrated defector, Kit Caldwell. But Caldwell is convinced that the KGB suspects him of treachery and he wants to get out – now.

When Gabriel is ordered by his enigmatic handler Faith Green to help, he is pulled into a web of shifting loyalties and dangerous escape plans. As tensions rise and trust fractures, he is forced to confront the fine line between devotion and deception. But which will he choose?

Format: Hardcover (272 pages) Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 3rd September 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller

Find Cold Sunset on Goodreads

Purchase Cold Sunset from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

My Review

Cold Sunset is the third book in the series featuring reluctant spy Gabriel Dax, the follow-up to Gabriel’s Moon and The Predicament.

He may still be a reluctant spy who would rather be pursuing his career as a travel writer but Gabriel Dax is certainly now a more experienced one. However it’s not in ways he’s very happy about. Previous missions have put him in a position where he’s been involved in fatal confrontations making him ponder just what he’s become capable of. ‘How had he managed to do what he’d just done? What instincts had taken over? What kind of person was he becoming?’

It’s all because he remains in thrall to the alluring and enigmatic Faith Green, head of the MI6 section known as ‘the termite hunters’ charged with rooting out traitors in the service.

It’s as part of one of these ‘termite hunting’ missions that Gabriel finds himself sent to California to make contact with a poet, Francis Falkner, who has information about a former Bletchley Park colleague he suspects of passing information to the Russians. Gabriel feels uncomfortable about the task given they often end up so badly. On the other hand it gives him an opportunity to gather material for his latest book. One of the joys of the series is the insight we get into the books Gabriel is working on, some of which sound really interesting, and getting glimpses of his rather florid writing style. I suspect Boyd has a lot of fun with this.

Gabriel’s fear that past events will catch up with him proves well-founded, resulting in another narrow escape once back in England. He barely has time for another long lunch with his publisher or a quickie with his ex-girlfriend before he’s sent to Russia to assist in the exfiltration of Kit Caldwell, a British triple agent for whom Gabriel has been acting as decoy by posing as a double agent. (Yes, it got my head spinning too.) Caldwell believes his position has been compromised and he needs to get out of Russia in double quick time before the KGB catch up with him. The carefully planned mission looks foolproof on paper but is anything ‘foolproof’ in a world where duplicity is a way of life.

Ah, duplicity thy name is Faith Green. (It’s not even her real name.) Gabriel finds her tantalising even though she seems able to move from passionately intimate to coldly indifferent in a split second. He believes he loves her but does she feel the same way about him? Sometimes he thinks the answer is yes, at other times he wonders if he’s just being manipulated. One of the great things about the series is the way the author keeps us guessing about her as well, no more so than in this book.

The fallout from the exfiltration mission and the possibility there is another traitor in MI6 means Gabriel must lie low for a while. But is there anywhere in the world where someone can’t track you down?

Gabriel is someone you can’t help rooting for even though he often makes foolish blunders, smokes and drinks too much and is a bit of a loner. (The only person he really opens up to is his therapist Dr Katrina Haas.) But while researching his books he’ll happily chat to anyone whether that’s a man employed to clear up cigarette butts and dog shit in Red Square or a barber on a remote Greek island.

Cold Sunset is another thoroughly enjoyable, stylish spy thriller. Is this the final outing for Gabriel Dax? I really hope not.

I received a review copy courtesy of Viking via NetGalley.

In three words: Intriguing, entertaining, well-crafted
Try something similar: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre

About the Author

Author William Boyd

WILLIAM BOYD was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the award-winning author of seventeen highly acclaimed novels and five collections of stories. He divides his time between London and France. (Photo: Goodreads author page/Bio: Publisher author page)

Connect with William
Website | Facebook | Instagram

Book Review – Throw Away the Key by Jason M. Hough @crookedlanebks #20BOS26

whatcathyreadnext1 Comment

About the Book

Lars Bergman is no ordinary janitor. He’s the CIA’s locksmith. 

Formerly part of the CIA’s infamous Surreptitious Entry Team, Lars is now responsible for every padlock, safe, and secure door across the CIA headquarters. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick…except one, which he tried and failed to open during a botched mission in Warsaw at the end of the Cold War. 

Cruising toward retirement, Lars’s life is upended when a senior CIA official dies and he’s called upon to open the safe in her office. Inside the safe is a clue only Lars would notice, left by someone he’d worked with in his heyday. As he investigates, Lars soon realizes that his failed Warsaw operation has come back to haunt him and perhaps give him another chance at picking the one lock that’s ever eluded him. 

What Lars doesn’t realize is that what the lock is protecting could have dire ramifications for the organization he has spent his whole adult life safekeeping.

Format: Paperback (320 pages) Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication date: 14th July 2026 Genre: Thriller

Find Throw Away the Key on Goodreads

Preorder/Purchase Throw Away the Key from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

My Review

Cryptic clues – a photograph and a seemingly innocuous document – found in the safe of a deceased senior CIA officer whom Lars worked with many years before sets him on a trail that leads back to Warsaw, the location of a failed ‘off the books’ mission back in 1989. It’s a failure that’s stuck in his mind ever since because it involved one of the very few locks he was unable to pick and, worst of all, he left a trace of his attempt to do so.

Disguising his trip as a long overdue vacation, Lars sets out on a private mission to uncover the truth, weaving a trail across Europe aimed at covering his tracks so as not to attract the attention of his bosses. It means using the ‘tradecraft’ he learned while in the field all those years ago, such as how to spot covert surveillence. Along with his exceptional lockpicking skills, he has to use a good deal of ingenuity, constructing lockpicking tools out of virtually nothing, and his ‘sixth sense’ for when something’s not quite right.

There are some terrific set-pieces, including one in a Swiss bank that could have come out of a heist movie, and some narrow escapes. Lars is definitely a character you can’t help rooting for and I liked he was able to call in favours from people he’d helped over the years.

Eventually, the trail leads back to CIA headquarters and some dramatic scenes as a conspiracy years in the making is revealed. It’s here that Lars’ ingenuity really comes to the fore, proving that the weak points in any organisation’s security are usually at the back door and come with a High Vis jacket.

It’s clear the book is the result of extensive research, especially into locks and lockpicking. I’m not sure I could unpick a lock using the descriptions in the book but that’s my failing not the author’s. However I could bandy around terms such as ‘wiper tension bar’ and ‘shim’. And I now know there is such a thing as competitive lockpicking and that there’s an annual LockCon conference attended by lockpicking experts from across the world.

Throw Away the Key is a really entertaining, well-paced spy thriller. Think the love child of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Mission Impossible.

I received a digital advance reader copy courtesy of Crooked Lane Books. Throw Away the Key is book 8 of my 20 Books of Summer 2026.

In three words: Clever, compelling, pacy
Try something similar: The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson

About the Author

Jason M. Hough (pronounced ‘Huff’) is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Dire Earth Cycle, Instinct, and the near-future spy thriller Zero World, which Publisher’s Weekly said is “a thrilling action rampage that confirms Hough as an important new voice in genre fiction.”
‍
In a former life he was a 3D artist, animator, and game designer (Metal Fatigue, Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction, and many others). He has worked in the fields of high-performance cluster computing and mobile user interfaces, and is named as co-inventor on three patents related to mobile content and licensing.

He lives near Seattle, Washington with his family. When not writing, reading, or hanging out with his kids, he spends his time chasing espresso perfection (with mixed results), and taking long road trips in his electric car.

Connect with Jason
Website