My Name is Nobody - Matthew Richardson

 

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.

The Scarlet Papers - Matthew Richardson

 Apparently a debut spying novel, The Scarlet Papers is very impressive indeed.   Matthew Richardson has tackled all the major tropes of the British genre and acquitted himself splendidly.   Moles within the SIS, seedy postwar compromises, double agents, triples, illegals, even the real-life embodiment of super-evil, Mad Vlad.

Max Archer, failed MI6 applicant turned failed academic, is summoned to meet the legendary Scarlet King, first and only female C, active in the field from 1946 all the way to 1992.   Now in her 90s, it seems she wants to publish her tell-all autobiography but needs Max, author of two failed books on Philby and other traitors, to fact-check it.

Obviously, a recipe for disaster.   The powers-that-be can't have that sort of thing coming out.  Some of Scarlet's secrets are big enough to bring down governments, let alone their creepy secret agencies.   The chase is on and it's Max who finds himself on the front-line, with only a dual national private intelligence operative to help him.

Again, Richardson handles this remarkable well.  The theme is preposterous, but then so are all actual spying scandals.   Richardson has not only done his homework, fleshing out the narrative with historical parallels, but he brings it right up to date with the botched Skripol poisoning - one off-the-books op for Scarlet, post-retirement, is accompanying the swapped Skripol to the UK.

The best thing, though, is that the action is suitably thrilling.   I enjoyed The Scarlet Papers hugely and will be searching the shelves for more by Mr Richardson.