Tag: thriller

Book Review – The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter @QuercusBooks

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter. My thanks to Sophie and Poppy at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Quercus for my review copy via NetGalley.

About the Book

Book cover of The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter

Slim Parsons is all but burned.

Her last deep cover job for MI5 ended with a life-and-death struggle on a private jet that caused her to go on the run from both the deadly target and her angry bosses in the Security Service. They say that violence comes too easily to her; that she’s bordering on delinquent and unsuitable for the roll of an MI5 operative.

Yet she is recalled and asked to infiltrate a news website that’s causing alarm in the highest circles. It is staffed by a group descended from wartime codebreakers operating from an unassuming office block near Bletchley Park. Operation Linesman looks like a come down, the curtain on a brilliant career in the shadows. However, she accepts the assignment on condition that the Security Service searches for her missing brother.

Linesman turns out to be anything but simple. Her personal loss, her previous deep cover role, and a threat to MI5 itself from her original target come together in a three-way collision.

And all the while she is watched by someone even deeper in the shadows than she is.

Format: Hardback (496 pages) Publisher: Quercus
Publication date: 7th November 2024 Genre: Thriller

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My Review

You could be forgiven for thinking when you start the book that you’re reading the latest in a series because Slim’s just finished a dangerous undercover mission. The action she was forced to take to ensure her own safety during that mission has landed her in hot water with her superiors. With her cover blown, it’s meant she’s had to go to earth – quite literally – and she fears her career may be ancient history. She also just happened to make off with something that a very dangerous enemy would like to have back.

With the previous operation seemingly closed down, she’s assigned to a new undercover role that starts out looking innocuous but turns out to be anything but. It becomes a battle between press freedom, civil liberty and government control of information. And perhaps that previous operation isn’t so dead after all?

At nearly 500 pages, you might think the author would have a job maintaining the pace of a thriller but he throws in plenty of action scenes during which Slim proves just what a ferocious, fearless and resourceful opponent she is, fashioning weapons out of anything to hand. She’s also adept at the tradecraft of a spy: dodging surveillence, juggling multiple identities, disappearing off the radar and generally keeping her wits about her. As a reader, you’ll need to keep your wits about you as well because there are quite a lot of characters to get to know and keep track of.

Some of the buildings used for wartime code-breaking at Bletchley Park feature in the story but it’s modern code-breaking technology that ultimately provides the vital information about just exactly what’s been going on. And those goings-on include things such as people trafficking, modern slavery, money laundering, bribery and corruption. What also gives the plot such a contemporary feel is that Slim’s adversary is a billionaire with dubious morals and friends in high places. (Recent real-life examples may come to mind.)

There’s always a danger that the hero/heroine of a spy thriller will come across as a little one-dimensional – all action and no inner life. There’s no chance of that here because Slim has a complex private life and is facing some very difficult personal challenges. She may be ruthless when it comes to her job and give the impression of complete self-dependence, but she needs love and support just like everyone else. And perhaps someone to watch over her…

Slim Parsons has been likened to Lisbeth Salander, the fictional character created by Stieg Larsson. Lisbeth had more than one outing so perhaps The Enigma Girl is not the last we’ll see of Slim?

In three words: Taut, intricate, suspenseful
Try something similar: The Traitor by Ava Glass

About the Author

Author Henry Porter

Henry Porter was a regular columnist for the Observer and now writes about European power and politics for The Hive website in the US. He has written several bestselling thrillers, including Brandenburg, which won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, A Spy’s Life and Empire State, which were both nominated for the same award. He is also the author of the Paul Samson spy thrillers: Firefly, which won the 2019 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, and White Hot Silence. Henry Porter is frequently described as the heir to John le Carré. He lives in London. (Bio: Publisher author page/Photo: X profile)

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Book Review – Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd

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About the Book

Book cover of Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story. . .

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 5th September 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Gabriel Dax (a name that could surely have come out of a James Bond novel) is a drifter who makes his living as a travel writer. It’s an occupation that suits his unwillingness to get tied down and it’s brought him moderate success, enough at least to keep him in Scotch. He’s also been able to combine it with doing small clandestine errands for his elder brother, Sefton, who does something connected with the security services, although Gabriel doesn’t know quite what.

There are three women in Gabriel’s life. The first is his girlfriend, Lorraine, whom he finds sexually exciting but is less keen for their relationship to become a long-term commitment than she is.

The second woman is his therapist, Dr Katrina Haas, whom he consults because of his insomnia and the nightmares about the fire that killed his mother when he was six years old. His memories of that night differ from the official verdict about the cause of the fire – a moon-shaped nightlight in his bedroom (the ‘Gabriel’s moon’ of the book’s title.) Dr Haas convinces him the key to curing his insomnia is to discover the truth of what happened that night which enables the author to introduce a secondary storyline.

The third and, as it turns out, the most influential woman in his life is the mysterious Faith Green who draws Gabriel deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue. She knows just how to play him, starting from their very first encounter. ‘Was it that she understood him better than he understood himself? Maybe.’ Gabriel finds her alluring but it’s only very much later he realises how deep he’s become immersed in a dangerous conspiracy through his attraction to her. ‘Perhaps that was how she managed to make him do her bidding, keeping him wandering in the special labyrinth she’d constructed, baffling and tormenting – and where there were no exits’. The author creates a brilliantly intriguing relationship between Gabriel and Faith. At one point, he describes her as ‘the sorceress, the puppet-mistress of his life’. Later she’s both ‘his tormentor and his solace’.

Gabriel may consider himself a good liar – the essential gift of a good spy – but it turns out he’s an amateur compared with those around him, even people he believed he could trust. And situations in which he considers himself safe are often fraught with hidden dangers.

For lovers of espionage thrillers there’s plenty of spycraft: counter-surveillence techniques, coded messages, safe houses and clandestine meetings. You really get a sense of the Cold War era, a time of global tension epitomised by the Cuban missile crisis. And the various locations to which Gabriel travels, such as pre-unification Germany, are skilfully evoked. I also loved the author gives us an opaque ending and the neat little conceit at the end.

Gabriel’s Moon is an absorbing and assured spy thriller, highly recommended if you’re a fan of the novels of John le Carre.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Viking via NetGalley.

In three words: Suspenseful, intriguing, engrossing
Try something similar: The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson

About the Author

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series with Channel 4. In 2005, Boyd was awarded the CBE.

He is married and divides his time between London and south-west France. (Photo: Goodreads author page/Bio: Publisher author page)

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