Russell James has been named “the Godfather of Noir” by Ian Rankin. Russell writes crime novels - about criminals and victims, not the cozy procedural or whodunnit. He is the editor of Great British Fictional Detectives.
John Fullerton’s hero this time is a spy, or trainee spy, masquerading as a Reuters reporter. As opposed to Fullerton himself, who for some twenty years actually was a Reuters man while doubling as what in the trade is called a ‘contract labourer’ for MI6. So he knows what he is talking about. Especially when Spy Game is set on an old patch of his, the Pakistan/Afghan border.
His fictional agent, Broderick, stumbles through his double role, crossing and recrossing the border, crossing and recrossing contacts and employers, crossing and recrossing his fingers, until doggedly winning through to a suitably sickening conclusion. En route he is ordered to kill the man who sees him as his one way out from the kind of hole you can get into only in that kind of area. Kill him, Broderick is told, and while you’re at it, do away with his wife. It’s tidier that way.
All in the spy’s working day.
Fullerton is unmatchable at the details of the frontline spy game, the very believable characters engaged in it, and the cold-eyed, cold-hearted decisions that those who intend to win the game have to take. It is not a game for the faint-hearted.
