An Islamist suspect is being grilled by MI6. He doesn't care - he knows he has something to trade. A secret that will shake the spying world. Solomon Vine, the lead investigator, gets a call. Release Dr Yousef immediately. It comes from C himself, Sir Alexander Cecil. Vine, always the awkward one, delays and wonders why he should let his man go. In the meantime, someone shoots Dr Yousef.
Vine returns to the UK, persona non grata at MI6. But his old mentor Cosmo Newton, former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, offers a lifeline. Newton thinks he knows what Yousef's secret was - a mole in MI6. Thus the adventure begins, spy on spy, Vine against Gabriel Wilde, his oldest friend, the other investigator when Yousef was shot, the man who took Rose, the love of Vine's life. Wilde has been snatched in Istanbul. A video circulates in which 'terrorists' threaten to behead him. Is it real - or has Wilde staged the kidnap? Is Wilde the mole?
The story is gripping enough, the characters sufficiently well drawn. It is spy fiction in the Smiley mode - spying on spies, the enemy within - and a good example of the genre. I enjoy the sub-genre and I enjoyed My Name is Nobody (though I hate the title). I wonder, though, what can anyone bring to the game which Le Carre hasn't already done to the point of death. Nothing much, I fancy. In this instance I admit I didn't get who 'Nobody' was but I knew more or less from the outset who the mole was. The denouement I found slightly underdone. The build-up to it, however, was extremely well worked. Not a classic but a very good, very enjoyable thriller.
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