Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
This is the second book featuring the redoubtable Bente Jensen an operative of the Swedish Secret Service, posted to Brussels with her husband and family. Her opposite number at the British Embassy, Jonathan Green working for MI6 is tasked with recovery of documents on a flash drive leaked to Bente by one of his own staff. It is clear that he is ruthless as the source of the leak is quickly found dead in London.
These documents implicate, to Ministerial level, the UK in the use of illegal detention and torture at ‘The House’ in Turkey. They also implicate Green in the torture and rendition and call into question, all of the U.K.’s shared intelligence product. This puts Bente into an awkward position with her own hierarchy who would prefer not to know.
In his efforts to target Isis and Daesh as well as recover the leaked information. Green way oversteps the bounds of operational justification and Bente’s family including her husband and collaterally one of her sons, is dragged into the firing line, quite literally.
Green is not flavour of the month, anyway, with his old friend and now new boss, as he has been playing away with his boss’s wife. Never a good idea!
More than one career, marriage and family unit is destroyed in this taut, engaging and fascinating thriller set in an age where a surveillance footprint is traceable, almost everywhere, by friend and foe - and an age where the two are sometimes indistinguishable.
The writing is crisp, the action fast paced, the plot and psychology convincing and the subject matter both credible and contemporary. As it is sometimes not mentioned, it is worth crediting the translator as well. This novel does not feel translated, so well is it rendered into English.
I’m off to get the first book, ‘Into a Raging Blaze’ as Andreas Norman will be one to watch.
