City of Traitors - Alex Gerlis

 

Third part of British spy series set amidst the end of WW2

Alex Gerlis is a prolific British spy thriller author, who has hit gold with this series he has christened the Double Agent series. 

As the end of the Second World War in Europe looms, a new conflict is in its early stages: who will control Europe when the war ends?

Soviet double-agent 'Archie' is now a British diplomat in the United States, feeding information on the Special Relationship back to Moscow Centre. Meanwhile, erstwhile Soviet agent 'Bertie' – Charles Cooper – is sent on a perilous mission to Italy before being drawn towards Berlin as the Allies draw near their goal.

Gerlis takes pride in his research and it pays off. As Archie travels to America's capital to obtain delicate information about the production of the nuclear bomb and the Manhattan project for his Soviet leaders; Bertie is up against it in the Italian Alps.

The zig-zag and whipcrack nature of the chase of both men is exhilarating and the book does culminate in quite a gripping finale. The pay off of all pay offs we hope will appear in the fourth book which takes place during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s when we discover true identities.

There is a real joy to imagine these places; as a well travelled reader I have travelled to America numerous times but never DC and a lot of Europe remains a mystery to me but this book along with a recent Simon Michael novel set in France has made me want to venture out to the continent and visit our neighbours by train or plane. Much like Charles Cooper did in the first book Every Spy A Traitor.

The moments for Charles/Bertie in Berlin are so gripping as he recovers culminating in a climatic showdown where he saves his own skin yet the pace of writing by Gerlis coupled with that attention to detail of period and place makes for a riveting read.

The credit that must be extended to Gerlis is that as the scope of his Double Agents has grown across the series with locations getting further away from the centre of London to Cambridge to Europe to North America, Gerlis has not been overawed by this expansion of horizons and his characters have reflected him in taking it all in his stride. 

City of Traitors is out from Canelo on Thursday 13th August on all formats.

Every Spy A Traitor - Alex Gerlis

 

First book of brand new series by prolific Alex Gerlis

Published by Canelo, Every Spy a Traitor, is the first in a prospective four part Double Agent espionage series by Alex Gerlis. The series will cover a dramatic 20 year period from the start of WW2, to the freezing of relations resulting in the Cold War .

It is 1937, as fascism is on the rise across continental Europe, fear is equally in the ascendancy. British Intelligence is trying to work out who the enemy is; whilst they have a spy amongst their own ranks named simply 'Archie'. 

Charles Cooper, a young British writer, is travelling through Europe seeking a story for his next novel. Yet his quest for research means that fact and fiction are going to merge together sharply and put him at the forefront of his next story.

Gerlis who came to prominence with the Spies series in books, is a passionate historian as well as a good yarn teller; those two passions finding a marriage together as the story of Cooper is relayed.

The first half of the book, which shows Cooper travelling the European railways and countries before the Second World War commences when Poland is invaded by Hitler's Germany; Cooper's journey is a romantic one full of notions and impulses of freedom. 

The second half when we become privy to Archie's true identity is heart-racing as Gerlis navigates the political landscape and ever shifting questions of loyalty abound in the back rooms. Little morsels of details such as an assassin dressed in a Cambridge University gown so as not to warrant suspicion on the school grounds is a delight especially; as are the ability to embrace historical fact with a highly digestable story much like Ken Lussey does in his Bob Sutherland novels. 

This is a whip-crack entertaining read full of nuggets of historical detail and full of great characterisation that while of the time also feel relevant to today's day and age. Top notch stuff from an established writer in total command of his powers seemingly.

Every Spy A Traitor is released from Canelo on 6th June on all formats.

My thanks to Canelo for the review opportunity.

No Time To Die

The final entry in the Daniel Craig era of playing 007 came and went in November of 2021 after much fanfare and delay in release due to a pandemic that even MI6's finest could not contain.

Much was expected of the film with it being Craig's last foray in the tuxedo with us wondering would he be sipping on a martini by movie's end and how would they cope with the end of this window.

After finally getting to watch the film on Amazon Prime following the purchase by the global firm of the MGM catalogue, me and my wife tucked in on a Friday night after our six-month old went to bed and pressed play. For me it was as enjoyable a film watching experience I can recall in recent times, a joy of cinema going and a pleasure to watch capable film-makers marshal the telling of a story in homage and respect to a movie icon.

Icons are those rare beings, they stay with us no matter, they live on even when we pass, and the character James Bond has gone through six different iterations from the birth in 1962 under Sean Connery to the present date. We have known for some time this would be Craig's last performance as Iain Fleming's creation, and it does not disappoint.

A gripping pre-credits sequence focusing on Madeleine's youth where her mother is killed by a masked intruder to her home in Norway, then we are thrust into a romantic getaway for Madeleine and Bond in Italy which is quickly disrupted by Spectre with the ghosts of Bond's past - Vespa specifically - looming over him.

This leads to a dissolution of their relationship and a parting at a train station, we are then thrust five years into the future. Bond is living in Jamaica - a nod to where Iain Fleming wrote his character - he is essentially off the grid and retired from his job, when he is approached by an old friend, Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) of the CIA who asks him to do a favour in Cuba. Therefore, the globe-trotting so familiar to a Bond film commences. Bond drops into Havana, where he meets Paloma (Ana de Armas - spellbinding in a brief 15 minute role), to take down a Spectre meeting. A great set piece follows culminating in a sinking at sea that Bond evades.

This leads Bond to return to London and meet M (Ralph Fiennes), who re-assigns him but without his moniker due to his retirement. This is the first of many permutations to make the viewer aware of the changes to Bond is having to endure be they an ever-changing world or the culmination of ageing as father time does not wait for anyone.

Throughout the film, you get the sense of Bond's ageing from how it takes him that little bit longer to recover from explosions he seems disorientated after a bomb explodes at a cemetery, with him struggling to regain his balance and equilibrium. Certain situations you get the sense of him struggling to comprehend and process the predicament such as a sinking ship, yet this is Bond we know he will triumph.

The climax of the film is so well handled as it portrays Bond as not merely an immortal icon but a man like all of us, fallible to mistakes, guilty of being overconfident and yet sentimental when love comes into the room.

No Time To Die is a fine send off to the Daniel Craig era, a self-reflexive work not just on his five films but the Bond oeuvre as a whole with a positive message to the importance of legacy and family heralded by the final song 'We Have All The Time in the World' by Louis Armstrong, originally performed in George Lazenby's solo outing On Her Majesty's Secret Service. You have to make time for family no matter what your job, even a world-saving spy needs a break from time to time.

No Time To Die is available to view on Amazon Prime. But I wish I saw it in the cinema.