The Insider - Matthew Richardson

 Matthew Richardson's second novel is blisteringly up to date.   It asks the question all espionage afficianados are asking: just how deep does Vladimir Putin's interference run in contemporary western states.   Richardson starts with the obvious answer in Britain, which Britain was just beginning to wake up to when Richardson wrote The Insider in 2021, when first Dominic Cummings and then his clownish front man Boris Johnson both fell: Westminster was rotting from the top down.

Richardson then smartly turns the British situaiton on its head.   Both Cummings and to an extent Johnson were outsiders who used Russian money to break Britain.   It was an unusual coincidence that the supremely corruptible Johnson happened to be Mayor of London at the time it was dubbed Londongrad because Russian oligarchs were paying ludicrous sums to buy it.   That was an accident unlikely to be repeated.   Richardson therefore imagines (as the title makes clear) a government corrupted from the inside, a thirty year Putin plan to place a mole to the very top of the British Civil Service.

Solomon Vine, a disgraced head of counter-espionage, is summoned from unwelcome retirement when a Russian media tycoon is murdered at the Savoy.   Alexander Ivanov was Britain's mole with access to Putin's Kremlin.   He was so important, his existence so critical, that only four people knew about him: the Chief Secretary at the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Secretary, the head of MI6, the Chief of the Defence Staff and the National Security Adviser Emma Lockwood, who has summoned Vine.   If there is a mole in government circles, which Ivanov swore there was, it has to be one of these so-called 'Elders'.

Vine is given the highest possible security clearance so he can interview each one.   Very quickly two of them are murdered, clearly by the same person or team who killed Ivanov.   The suspect list is down to two.   But each murder victim has left clues for Vine.   There are files so secret that even MI6 doesn't have copies...

What makes The Insider so compelling is that it seems so simple.   Only two suspects...?   How can anyone get a full-length novel out of that?   Very cleverly is the answer.   And, even more important, wholly convincingly.   This is Russian interference as we all think we know it.   Yes, I guessed the mole by the midpoint, but I in no way guessed what the great plot actually was or the final twist.   It's the best contemoporary British spy novel I've read this year - and I've read some really good ones in 2025.   One of them was Richardson's first novel, My Name is Nobody, which I didn't like as much.   I've also read and reviewed the third, The Scarlet Papers, which was The Times' Thriller of the Year 2023, and which I do remember enjoying hugely.

Night Agent = Matthew Quirk

 Night Agent belongs to the thriller sub-genre pioneered by TV series 24 and Homeland, in which the deep state - supposedly the upholders of order - turn out to be the enemy, the enablers of chaos.   Night Agent itself is now the heavily promoted season headliner on Netflix.  I neither have nor especially want Netflix, so the book is all I can comment upon.

It's a great read, well-written and extremely well constructed, the twists coming at regulat intervals.   Yes, like so many contemporary books, it goes on a tad too long for my taste.  That said, the plot is so high-concept that I do feel some explanation was necessary after the denouement.   I don't want to give too much away, but the concept is a high as it can get in the sub-genre.   Does the rot rise all the way to the highest office?

Peter Sutherland of the FBI is the night agent in question.  His job is to sit overnight in the White House Situation Room in case the phone rings.   If it rings, there is a code to be confirmed, then Peter passes it on to either his FBI boss, James Hawkins, or the White House Chief of Staff, Diane Farr, end of involvement.   It was Farr picked Sutherland for the job.  She knows he can be relied on because of his father's sins.   Sutherland senior was a high-ranking FBI official who turned traitor and killed himself.   Sutherland also suspects he was chosen because he is a permanent outsider; if he messes up, well, you know, the sins of the father...

Peter came to Farr's attention because he was the hero of a Metro crash a year or so earlier.   Peter suspects the crash was not entirely an accident, and is quietly looking into it in his downtime, which is considerable.   The phone is only going to ring if something goes badly wrong.  And the vasr majority of the time, nothing goes that awry.

Until it does.   The phone rings.  It is a young woman, panic-stricken.   She is hiding in an empty house.   Armed men have come to the house she lives in and killed her aunt and uncle.   They are now coming for her.   She knows the pass code.   Her uncle told her before he died.   He also told her to mention a red ledger.   Peter passes her on as instructed.   But he can't resist going by her place on his way home.   He can't stay away from the funeral.   After the funeral, the girl approaches him.   She heard him speak earlier.   She recognised his voice from the phone call.   Who is he?  What is going on?   Why were her aunt and uncle executed by men speaking Russian?

As I say, it is perfectly done.   Quirk keeps the writing simple and straightforward because the plot is so complex.   The characters are well-rounded.   The good guys have flaws, the bad guys can behave reasonably.    I don't find (especially after Trump and January 6) the central concept too far-fetched.   And I absolutely devoured the book.   Great entertainment done wondrously well.   Almost makes me want Netflix, but I will continue to resist the temptation.