- This new novel from celebrated English author William Boyd is the second in his three-part Gabriel Dax series. I hadn't read the first so wondered if I'd find the second frustrating. I certainly didn't.
- The novel is so absorbing in every way. The central character, Gabriel, is a successful travel writer who also secretly works for the UK spy agency MI6, and occasionally the CIA. It's full of other charming characters, locations, and stories that make the novel come dramatically alive. It’s set in 1963. John F. Kennedy is the US President, and we all know what is about to happen in Dallas, Texas.
- Gabriel is thirty-three, single, and has just bought a cottage in the small village of Claverleigh in Sussex. He travels to London frequently to meet his MI6 agent Faith Green, who also happens to be his previous, now just occasional, lover. Green visits him in Claverleigh. She requests he go to Guatemala, run by an unpopular autocratic military regime, to interview the possible future leader Santiago Angel Lopez, a popular ex-priest known as ‘Padre Tiago’. There will inevitably be a regime change and an election, and Tiago the likely new President. The CIA wants to know how the relationship with the USA would play out. But the CIA is not one united body. It's riven with power plays, some very ugly indeed. Gabriel has to be careful.
- While in London he regularly meets his publisher, who's now told him he is being sued for plagiarism by an old famous author who wrote a book years ago on the
Greek Islands. Gabriel's latest book is also about the Islands. He's enraged by the outrageous claim, and hires a lawyer. Then he decides to confront the author directly.
- There are numerous subplots in the novel that delve deep into the political complexities of the time in an extremely satisfying and highly credible way. The resolutions are perfect. There are assassinations by lone gunmen as we know. That characterised 1960's America.
- Kennedy was also assassinated at that time. By a 'lone gunman'.
No comments:
Post a Comment