There’s a feeling of deja vu in William Boyd’s new espionage novel set in Africa during the Cold War.
An interesting bunch of writers, William Boyd. His 43-year publishing career has produced 18 novels and five short-story collections, screenplays, stage plays and nonfiction. He has adapted Ian Fleming (Born in Ghana and raised in Nigeria, Boyd’s touchstones have been colonial and post-colonial. The Graham Greene comparison is unavoidable, though without the religious and political undercurrents that make Greene such an unnerving, fascinating study.
The action moves through Africa to London and various European cities as Dax is used as a messenger and clueless collaborator. As he gradually tries to work out what is going on, subplots evolve: he sees a psychiatrist to resolve a childhood trauma around the death of his mother, and he has an affair with a working-class Londoner called Lorraine. When not being used by unseen forces, Gabriel works on his next travel book, about rivers.
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