His historical novels include the Nick Revill series, set in Elizabethan London, a Victorian sequence, and a series of Chaucer mysteries, now in in e-books.
Just as we’re approaching the crunch-point in the Brexit process - maybe - this new spy novel by Alan Judd could hardly be timelier. It is full of talk of ‘deal versus no deal’, of bottom lines and compromises. The action shuttles between Whitehall and Brussels. Among the characters are a surprisingly sympathetic Foreign Secretary, with just a suggestion of Boris Johnson, and an offstage Prime Minister who is cautious and stubborn.
Sound familiar? Yes. Sound boring? That couldn’t be further from the reality. is one of the best thrillers, political or otherwise, that I’ve read for ages. It helps that Alan Judd knows the world he writes of, and the conversations, settings and dilemmas ring absolutely true. The only difference, perhaps, is that almost all the characters in the book are competent and intelligent in a way that seems totally implausible in real life.
Judd’s central character is Charles Thoroughgood, head of MI6 and familiar from earlier novels. Thoroughgood is one of the old school, and knows it. Possible retirement looms and a likely candidate to succeed him as Head of 6 is Gareth Horley.
Horley is a smooth, successful spy, even if his days in the field are behind him. Now he is going off-piste by cultivating a senior Dutch bureaucrat in Brussels who has been feeding him inside information on the EU position in the Brexit negotiations, particularly over the multi-billion pound divorce bill.
The Dutch’s diplomat’s codename is Timber Wolf. Is he a benign sheep in wolf’s clothing or the real thing? How do you tell a genuine bottom-line from a negotiating position? Who’s pulling the wool over whose eyes? What is Horley’s personal agenda? Charles Thoroughgood has to step in and, through a series of deceptions, get involved with Timber Wolf himself. Hard to believe that a couple of lunches between the two men in Brussels could make for riveting reading but they do.
There’s a substantial subplot in Accidental Agent as Daniel, the son of an old friend of Charles’s wife, has converted to Islam and seems to be becoming too involved with a possible jihadist group at a local mosque. MI5 has to investigate, and Charles inevitably gets drawn in. The denouement of both narrative strands is very satisfactory, neat but not too neat.
There are other pleasure in too. Alan Judd has some sly fun with the way the secret service has to sign up to Health and Safety rules, risk assessments, LGBT requirements, and so on. Sometimes these new battlegrounds seem take up more time and energy than the real enemy -whoever that may be.
Accidental Agent isn’t just likely to be this year’s best Brexity thriller. It’s likely to be one of the best, full stop.
