I have read two of Gerlis's Richard Price thrillers recently. I enjoyed both with reservations; they seemed unusually slow to get off the ground but once they did, they rattled along and ended eminently satisfactorily. The Second Traitor, which must be one of his latest, explores the same World War II territory, but is otherwise entirely different, starting with a bang and never really letting up.
It's the second of Gerlis's Double Agent series and is exactly that. Everyone is, or could be, a double agent. British, German, Russian - even Irish and Pro-Nazi British: no one's status is entirely clear. Does it matter that I haven't read the first in the series? Not one jot, which is how it should be. Anything we need to know is revealed over the course of the book whilst the main issue (who, if anyone, is our 'good guy'?) is left wide open.
It seems that our hero is Charles Cooper, aka Christopher Shaw and/or Malcolm Lyle, who is definitely a double, known to the Russians as 'Bertie'. The time is 1940 and the Russians have a non-aggression pact with Hitler - which shouldn't be taken to mean they are also at war with Britain. Their status, like Cooper's, is best described as equivocal. They are, however, keen to ensure that Britain resists any German invasion, otherwise Stalin believes Hitler will turn his empire-building east. So the NKVD feeds Cooper with information he can pass on to his branch of MI6, the Invasion Warning Sub-Committee. Meanwhile the Sub-Committee is sheilding Cooper from Murray, who is going round killing anyone who might betray the pro-Nazi Group. Meanwhile MI6 is keen to identify the other Soviet Agent they know by codename, Archie. We encounter Archie at intervals through the complex story, merrily killing and betraying agents in the field, whilst getting no clue to his (or her) identity.
The plot is extremely complex. The timeline is very compressed - the summer of 1940 - but flicks back and forth constantly. Gerlis makes it so deliberately. After all, a spider's web is anything but a straight line. I really enjoyed The Second Traitor and can't wait to get hold of the rest of the series.
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