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Review: A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman

September 11, 2024 by Ed Crocker Leave a Comment

Rating: 9/10

Right place, right time, right review

Synopsis

RIGHT PLACE. RIGHT TIME. WRONG MAN.

Jamie Tulloch is a successful exec at a top tech company, a long way from the tough upbringing that drove him to rise so far and so quickly. But he has a secret… since the age of 23, he’s had a helping hand from the Legends Programme, a secret intelligence effort to prepare impenetrable backstories for undercover agents. Real people, living real lives, willing to hand over their identities for a few weeks in return for a helping hand with plum jobs, influence and access.

When his tap on the shoulder finally comes, it’s swiftly followed by the thud of a body. Arriving at a French airport ready to hand over his identity, Jamie finds his primary contact dead, the agent who’s supposed to step into his life AWOL and his options for escape non-existent.

Pitched into a deadly mission on hostile territory, Jamie must contend with a rogue Russian general, arms dealers, elite hackers, CIA tac-ops and the discovery of a brewing plan for war. Dangerously out of his depth, he must convince his sceptical mission handler he can do the job of a trained field agent while using his own life story as convincing cover.

Can Jamie play himself well enough to avoid being killed – and to avert a lethal global conflict?

Review

Spy thrillers are an interesting breed. The best ones these days will remind the reader of the classics – Fleming, Le Carré, Greene – while taking cues from those reinventing the genre, the Mick Herrons etc. Goodman is firmly in this mold, and his tale has the feel of the old masters but with the innovative fresh breath of the new.

In particular, he has three tricks up his sleeve, and like a more hapless Q giving Bond the lowdown on his kit, I’ll take you through each one now.

The first is a hell of an elevator pitch. Enter the Legends Programme, one of the crown jewels of the modern British spy service, which essentially provides perfect backstories for cover agents. It does so by recruiting normal people who live their life – with a little career boost – then, when the time comes, a spy steps into their life for a time. The spy gets the perfect cover for their mission (as is made brutally clear early on, simple fake papers aren’t enough for a spy impersonating someone in the age of the internet anymore). Meanwhile the recruit gets a nice holiday. Of course, it doesn’t quite work for our protagonist and soon the ordinary bloke meant to swap lives with the spy is forced to complete the mission himself in Zanzibar and get a crash course in spycraft while up against Russian mercenaries, arms dealers, and a greater conspiracy.

It’s such a great idea you spend the first quarter of the book admiring it, but luckily this is not a one-trick pony as the second of Goodman’s tricks is his combination of whiplash pace and intelligence, a sort of pleasingly addictive melding of a Bond film with the cerebral, twist-filled layering of a Le Carré. This does not suffer from the surfeit of stupidity you often get with a thriller this breakneck fast; Goodman has considered his spycraft and his tech and it all feels convincingly real. I loved the flicking between the London spy headquarters and the action on the ground; there is also a strong sense of the role of the spy in the modern era that gives this another interesting layer. And when it all kicks off at the end, it’s a rapid fire attack of twists, action and violence that makes the hurricane gale pace of the rest of the book feel positively tortoise-like by comparison.

As for Goodman’s third gadget in his spy thriller roster? It’s the prose, stupid. This is one of those rare books where the prose itself is a character, because it’s so taut, sleek, and efficient. Clinical prose in a spy thriller is hardly unusual, but this is next level. It reminds me of the principles of a formula one car: strip everything non-essential from a normal car, and what you get is a sleek road monster doing what other cars can’t. It’s a terrifyingly disciplined approach to writing – I’m not sure I could do it myself – and it gave me an extra layer of pleasure reading it; studying the absences of words just as much as the words itself.  

Overall, this is an intelligent, modern, sleek machine of a spy thriller stripped to the core and programmed to entertain. A new thriller talent is born.

Filed Under: Reviews, Thriller Tagged With: Book Review, spy thriller, Thriller

About Ed Crocker

Ed Crocker was born in Manchester, UK and has managed to stay there ever since. By day he edits books—his clients include Sunday Times Bestselling authors, award-winning indie authors, and acclaimed small presses. By night, or sometimes also by day (freelancer rules), he reviews books and interviews authors, watches horror films, plays video games and writes fantasy and horror novels. My god, what a nerd.

His epic fantasy trilogy The Everlands – vampires, werewolves and sorcerers but no humans - is being published in North America by St Martin's Press. The first book, Lightfall, is out Jan 14, 2025.

You can find him on most socials (not Twitter) at @edcrockerbooks and at ed-crocker.com, where you can sign up for his newsletter GET CROCKED for your sins.

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