In 2012, William Boyd followed in the footsteps of Ian Fleming by publishing a well-received James Bond novel, Solo. Perhaps spies have been on his mind ever since as he returns to the subject in Gabriel’s Moon, a compelling thriller set in the murky underworld of the cold war.
At the heart of the story lies Gabriel Dax, a handsome, successful travel writer, who’s contacted by a representative of the British Secret Service and asked to perform an apparently minor act of espionage that has the benefit of being both low risk and financially rewarding. Despite, or perhaps because of, the steady nature of his life, he agrees.
What follows is an absorbing exploration of how British, American and Russian agents behaved during the period between two seemingly disparate events: the assassination of the Congolese president Patrice Lumumba in early 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.
Boyd’s work has always blended sharp characterisation with page-turning plots, often in international settings. As Gabriel begins to fall for his handler, a brittle, sensual woman who takes no prisoners in any aspect of her life, private or professional, the nature of their relationship changes, containing more twists and turns than the road to west Cork. Frankly, whenever they’re together, one never knows whether they’re going to have passionate sex or garrotte each other.
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The novel is complex, credible and compulsive, but the reader must pay close attention as various characters are revealed to be single, double and even triple agents. Indeed, one suspects that some of them, having been flipped and flipped back so often, aren’t even sure themselves who their true masters are but simply carry on, addicted to the subterfuge.
Like his contemporaries Sebastian Faulks and Robert Harris, Boyd has been publishing absorbing and innovative novels for decades while somehow finding himself a little less feted than, say, McEwan, Barnes or Rushdie. This seems rather unfair as his work deserves a similar level of critical appreciation. His latest hero, self-described as a “useful idiot”, might not be James Bond, but he’s what Bond might have been before M took him in hand. A double-O in waiting. The spy who came in from the warmth.
