Thriller of the month
The Foot Soldiers by Gerald Seymour
A Russian intelligence officer, Igor, defects to the British in present-day Denmark. While they are assessing his value, however, he becomes the target of an assassination attempt by his erstwhile colleagues. The circumstances suggest that there is a mole in the MI6 team handling Igor and MI5’s Jonas Merrick is sent across the river to catch the spy.
The Foot Soldiers is the first time that the veteran thriller writer Gerald Seymour has revived a character, with Merrick having made his debut last year in The Crocodile Hunter. In truth, his “quiet man” demeanour, even if it conceals steely resolve, risks creating a vacuum at the heart of the action and invites invidious comparisons with George Smiley.
Yet that leaves all the more room for the minor characters, the poor bloody infantry of espionage, whom Seymour excels at depicting. Among them are Alexei, a British source inside Russian military intelligence, and Maggie, his contact in Moscow. Seymour’s portrait of the latter and her feelings of responsibility towards Alexei as he comes under suspicion are as skilfully done as anything in the genre. A cleverly nuanced climax in which tables are unexpectedly turned more than once also marks this as a novel of real quality. Top brass.
Hodder & Stoughton, 432pp; £20
Sundial by Catriona Ward
Rob and Irving’s marriage has turned toxic. Irving is having affairs but his wife, Rob, is also worried about the strange behaviour of their 12-year-old daughter, Callie, who collects the bones of animals. Afraid that she is harming her younger sister, Rob decides to take Callie deep into the Mojave Desert, to the semi-abandoned house where she grew up — Sundial.
Despite the revelations aplenty that ensue about her upbringing, Sundial is not as distinctly original as The Last House on Needless Street (2021), the psychological thriller that was Catriona Ward’s breakthrough. The influence of Stephen King is especially apparent in the setting and in the flashbacks to Rob’s childhood, when she was raised by a pair of hippy scientists, Falcon and Mia, who carried out experiments on dogs’ brains.
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Nevertheless, Ward’s sophisticated writing often lifts Sundial beyond the rusty confines of horror, and if the plot sometimes boils over there are still numerous twists to shock and surprise in a narrative permeated by blood.
Viper, 352pp; £14.99
Edith and Kim by Charlotte Philby
Despite her place in the history of espionage, little is known about the life of Edith Tudor-Hart, the Vienna-born photographer and Communist agent who recommended Kim Philby for recruitment by the KGB.
In this spy novel with a difference, Charlotte Philby imagines the changing nature of the relationship between her infamous grandfather and Edith, drawing on his letters and the MI6 files since made public. Her characteristically detached style, as if observing Edith with one of her own cameras, perhaps increases the challenge of making the past live. Equally, Edith’s personally fraught but essentially mundane life in pre and postwar London is not obviously the stuff of thrillers.
Slowly but persuasively, however, Philby succeeds in bringing Edith into focus, drawing out the parallels between the fears and vulnerabilities of the life of a spy and that of being a woman. Increasingly alone, Edith’s chief struggle in her later life became the care of her autistic son, her own agent in an alien and hostile society. Edith and Kim may not be a page-turner, but it is a fine achievement and, fittingly, one wrought on its own terms. Watch the birdie.
Borough Press, 384pp; £14.99
Reputation by Sarah Vaughan
Following the success of the soon-to-be-televised Anatomy of a Scandal (2018), Sarah Vaughan’s new thriller examines the fears and vulnerabilities of women in the public eye today. A provocative interview and photograph (naturally, not in The Times) of the rising Labour MP Emma Webster leads to her being trolled by misogynistic men on social media. The threats mean she has to keep water bottles on her desk in case of an acid attack and watch her back when she cycles home at night.
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When her teenage daughter makes a foolish mistake after also being bullied online, Emma’s attempts to protect both of their reputations spirals out of control and she finds herself on trial for murder. The characters are rather at the service of Vaughan’s slickly topical plot, but the courtroom scenes are more than usually plausible and some late twists inventive. Order, order.
Simon & Schuster, 480pp; £14.99
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
Jess turns up out of the blue at the swanky apartment in Paris that her journalist brother Ben is renting, but a few minutes before he seems to have vanished from it without trace. While she tries to find out if his disappearance might be linked to what he was working on, she keeps an eye, Rear Window-style, on the lives of the other inhabitants of the building.
Zut alors, all of them have secrets, including Ben’s suave university chum Nick, the late-flowering bobo Mimi, her sexy mummy Sophie and the ancient concierge. There are Matisses on the wall and fine wine in the cellar. No onion-sellers, alas, but rapid changes of point-of-view and some deft rug-pulling keep the pages flick-flacking until sinister shenanigans are exposed.
The Paris Apartment may not quite match the appeal of The Guest List that made Lucy Foley’s name, but it’s perfect for a lost weekend. Mot juste.
HarperCollins, 416pp; £14.99
