I really like William Boyd's writing, but, for me, the first Gabriel Dax book although enjoyable, had some frustrating elements – such as the competing strands of storyline, thin characters and relationships. So I was a little unsure about reading this second outing for Gabriel. However I enjoyed this much more; the characters - perhaps because we know them better – feel more rounded and Gabriel, despite his flaws, is a more pleasant companion. The story moves along quickly and the background of real events adds a certain authenticity to aid the reader’s involvement. I am certainly looking forward to the next instalment Thank you to netgalley and Penguin Books for an advance copy of this book

A solid spy thriller and an easy read. Guaranteed to be popular and a good seller. Fans of his earlier, more challenging fiction might be a little disappointed, however.

Now, I am a huge admirer of Boyd, and also intensely fascinated by books, including novels, about espionage. Not the James Bond type, but the smaller, more ordinary end, rather than the glamour and glitz. I loved the first outing in what I believe is a trilogy about the central character of this and the earlier book. Gabriel Dax. What I loved in that is what this lacks. Gabriel , in that first book, was a youngish man who fell into espionage activities without realising it. Far more central to the book was his unresolved tragedy, the death of his mother through a violent domestic fire, when Gabriel was a young child. The early trauma had understandably left him emotionally scarred and guilt ridden, as the fire was apparently started by the candle lit night light little Gabriel could not sleep without. He had become a man who could not settle and commit to relationships, attractive to women, but rather lost, rather passive. He had stumbled into becoming a freelance travel writer, and also had a complex, somewhat confusing relationship with his older brother. That book explored those past and present family dynamics and contained some genuine shocks and complexities. Unfortunately, in this book, Gabriel, still protesting his unlikely espionage credentials, is nonetheless continuing. Inevitably more duplicitous, he is beginning to enjoy the derring-do, and seems to move a little closer to the high life. There are many recurring semi-jokes and tropes, around his susceptibility to developing fixations on his spymistress, and his being the object of other women’s fixations. He is now clearly a bon viveur, and there is a lot of repetition in quantity and detail about his quaffing. Ditto the on/off account of his psychotherapy encounters, which he has been having for some time to try and sort his childhood tragedy induced history of insomnia and nightmares. Ditto other running jokes about his various projected or completed travel books. Unfortunately, there has been a move away from the exploration of character to something much more tongue in cheek, spoofy and a kind of too knowing playfulness from Boyd. He just seems a little too treading a well worn groove of his own making in this