Safe Return Doubtful

British Literature – Published 2024

The novel begins in 1960 with journalist / author Gabriel Dax flying back to England after picking up a scoop, by interviewing the Congolese Prime Minister when a series of strange coincidences begins; a woman on the plane is reading one of his books, his London apartment has been entered, but left in ‘careful disarray’, and he sees the woman from the plance on the street. When he approaches her, she reveals that she is from MI6 and has a mission that may interest him.
Its a cracking beginning to another great Boyd spy novel.

I think when reading a spy novel the reader is more prepared to suspend disbelief to an extent they wouldn’t in other novels. These were the days of double agents, not long after Guy Burgess and the Cambridge Five, and it is only years after, if at all, that the public get to know what actually went on.
There is often some aspect of spying in a Boyd novel, its one of his things, along with the locations of Central Africa and the Scottish Borders, which he manages to include here also.

Just personally, as rollicking a good tale as this is, I prefer Boyd when he writes those stories of entire lives, as in Any Human Heart, The New Confessions and Sweet Caress, but he is an exceptional storyteller, and this was thoroughly entertaining.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5