{"id":211174,"date":"2025-10-19T14:44:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T14:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/211174\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T14:44:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T14:44:18","slug":"a-thrilling-tale-of-skulduggery-and-spies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/211174\/","title":{"rendered":"A thrilling tale of skulduggery and spies"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Boyd<\/a> once wrote a Bond novel, Solo, but Gabriel Dax, the spy in The Predicament, is, unlike Bond, only reluctantly in the espionage business and really would like to devote himself full time to his other job, as a travel writer. Right now he\u2019s finishing off his book on rivers, which serves as a useful cover for whatever country he\u2019s being sent to by his beautiful MI6 boss, with whom he\u2019s having an intermittent affair.<\/p>\n

To begin with, it\u2019s Guatemala, whose capital does have a river but is also the scene of deplorable CIA skulduggery in the interests of global capitalism. Dax is, in fact, an unwitting stooge, and as if that wasn\u2019t enough he\u2019s also being watched in London by his Russian minders (he\u2019s a double agent), who at least have taste: they pay him in banknotes (this is 1963) inserted into Tolstoy novels. Quite how the Russians never notice his dealings with his MI6 boss, the very woman they are interested in, is a mystery that is never quite resolved.<\/p>\n

Dax, who was introduced in Gabriel\u2019s Moon last year, is an adorably complicated character. His parents and his brother died in tragic circumstances, which is one reason why he has regular sessions with his psychoanalyst, an attractive woman to whom he tells absolutely everything. I mean, if you were a double agent, would you be sharing details of all your assignments with a woman of unknown loyalties, on the basis she\u2019s able to help you sleep better? Me neither, but that\u2019s Dax for you.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Cold War, obviously \u2014 you can tell that it\u2019s 1963 because you can rent a studio in Chelsea for \u00a310 a week \u2014 which means the Berlin Wall is still standing, and the Commies are up to no good, but the same would seem to be true of parts of the CIA. Dax is sent to Berlin at the same time that JFK is due to visit, and all I will say is that The Day of the Jackal may or may not come to mind. The Predicament is, in short, an immensely enjoyable, undemanding read. Bring on the next.<\/p>\n

Niamh O\u2019Keeffe is a writer at The London Standard<\/p>\n

The Predicament by William Boyd is out now (Viking, \u00a320)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Boyd once wrote a Bond novel, Solo, but Gabriel Dax, the spy in The Predicament, is, unlike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,219,90915,96,90912,90914,90916,56,54,55,90913],"class_list":["post-211174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-chelsea","tag-double-agent","tag-entertainment","tag-gabriel-dax","tag-the-predicament","tag-travel-writer","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-william-boyd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}