We and the Iranian people are still paying a high price for the 1953 coup that replaced Mohammad Mossadegh, the widely popular prime minister of Iran, with the autocratic rule of the Shah. That coup, organised by the CIA with Britain’s enthusiastic assistance, eventually led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and everything that flowed from that.
Mossadegh’s violent overthrow is the backdrop to Yesterday’s Spy (Bantam Press, £16.99), Tom Bradby’s riveting new thriller. Bradby’s previous works have been set in the familiar world of London’s present-day corridors of power, but Yesterday’s Spy takes an adventurous leap in time and place. Harry Tower’s son Sean has gone missing in Iran, where he was working as a foreign correspondent. But when Harry travels to Tehran to try to find him, he is soon sucked into a vortex of danger — and betrayal — that loops back to Harry’s wartime past in Yugoslavia. Bradby pulls this off with style and energy, evocative scene-setting and strong characterisation, especially in the case of Shahnaz, Sean’s daring and determined Iranian girlfriend.
A Traitor’s Heart (Welbeck, £12.99) is the second in the enthralling series by Ben Creed featuring Revol Rossel, a conservatory-trained violinist turned militia officer in Leningrad. The book opens in 1952, when Rossel is barely alive in a freezing labour camp above the Arctic Circle. Just as it seems that he is about to be murdered, he is rescued by his nemesis, Major Nikitin, who once cut off two of Rossel’s fingers. Nikitin brings Rossel back to Leningrad, where a serial killer is murdering Red Army veterans who fought their way into Berlin.
Unusually for this genre, the series is written by two authors: Ben Creed is a pseudonym of Chris Rickaby and Barney Thompson. Their literary experiment works wonderfully. The dark story is leavened with sharp dialogue and flashes of dry wit, as when Dr Bondar, a pathologist examining the latest victim, extends “a hand towards the body as if introducing it to dinner guests”.
Jo Spain’s The Last to Disappear (Quercus, £16.99) also unfolds in a freezing winter landscape: present-day Lapland in northern Finland. When Vicky Evans, a party-loving tour guide, is found dead in an icy lake, her brother Alex travels there to retrieve the body. But Agatha Koskinen, the detective in charge of the case, believes there are darker forces at play that may be linked to other women who went missing. Small-town Finnish life is engagingly drawn and Spain’s straightforward style makes for an easy, enjoyable read as she steadily builds the sense of threat.
The pace rapidly accelerates in Fiona Erskine’s Chemical Cocktail (Point Blank, £8.99), third in the acclaimed series featuring explosives expert Jaq Silver. Silver’s mother has died, leaving her a mysterious, menacing inheritance which raises more questions than it answers. Erskine, herself a professional engineer, writes with flair and confidence, whether describing a heart-of-darkness journey downriver into the Brazilian jungle or the quiet of Lisbon’s British cemetery.
Things speed up even more in Chris Pavone’s gripping Two Nights in Lisbon (Head of Zeus, £16.99). When Ariel Price wakes up in the Portuguese capital, her new husband is gone. At first, the police and the US embassy cannot help. John has been kidnapped and to pay the ransom Ariel must dig deep into her own long-buried secrets. I’m a big fan of Pavone’s intelligent and fast-paced thrillers. Two Nights in Lisbon once again delivers the goods. And Pavone, as always, is sharp and biting about the status-hungry consumers of America’s moneyed elite, such as Slade Wasserman — “a platinum level jackass who sprayed venom like a lawn sprinkler”.
In Gerald Seymour’s The Foot Soldiers (Hodder & Stoughton, £20), Jonas Merrick is the antithesis of Pavone’s Manhattan power players. There are strong echoes of George Smiley in Merrick’s mild and unprepossessing manner, which disguises a razor-sharp brain and considerable courage when necessary. The story initially seems weighed down by a gloomy miasma, but the pace eventually picks up in this smart tale of a deeply unpleasant, arrogant Russian defector.
Finally, a brief mention for the first illustrated edition of A Perfect Spy, considered by many to be John le Carré’s masterpiece (Folio Society, £85). Sam Green’s evocative artworks, planned with the le Carré estate, add a new layer of atmosphere and reader enjoyment — though a foreword or introductory essay would have completed this stylish package.
Adam LeBor is the author of ‘Dohany Street’, a Budapest noir crime thriller
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