Review of Black Bear by Aly Monroe (2013, John Murray)

1947 and British spy Peter Cotton has arrived in New York as part of an advance British delegation to check out the nascent United Nations.  Shortly after arriving he wakes up in the Ogden Clinic, an exclusive recovery centre for veterans.  His physician is surprised that he is both alive and not brain-damaged, having been found badly battered in a doorway, injected with three different truth-drugs.  As Cotton slowly recovers he’s plagued by vertigo, colour blindness, tunnel vision and hallucinations.  He has no recollection of his abduction and interrogation and cannot make sense of why he’s been left alive.  Both British and American intelligence are interested in his case, but both are guarded in their dealings with him.  As soon as Cotton is well enough he heads to Rhode Island to recover in peace, but despite the two months break he can’t help wondering what happened to him and speculating on who was responsible and why.

Black Bear is the fourth book in the Peter Cotton series.  It’s quite a curious book, being somewhat compelling despite the fact that very little seems to happen.  Cotton wakes in a clinic, slowly recovers, is discharged and heads away on vacation to recover, he makes friends with a couple of locals, and interacts with a couple of American and British intelligence agents.  And yet, Monroe manages to make all that mundanity somehow interesting, in part by driving the story along through character development, in part by capturing the reader’s need to discover what happened to him, and in part by layering in authentic historical detail.  I found the ending somewhat of anti-climax, but then the whole story is under-played, a kind of antithesis of the spills and thrills variety of spy tale.  Assuming that’s partly the aim, the book succeeds admirably.

Review of Washington Shadow by Aly Monroe (John Murray, 2009)

After spending time in Spain and Germany as an agent in the Economic Warfare Unit in the summer of 1945 Peter Cotton is sent to Washington DC.  John Maynard Keynes and a British team of negotiators are in the city trying to secure a loan to keep a bankrupt Britain afloat.  A new world order and the cold war is emerging and the city is full of intrigue and spies who circulate through endless embassy parties.  The Americans are reorganising their intelligence agencies and seem intent on destabilising British imperialism and growing their own spheres of influence.  Cotton’s job is to circulate the parties and to try and pick-up useful information, and to build a relationship with an African-American scholar interested in the fate of Africa post-war and a former Soviet tank commander who seems to be his equivalent appointment in the Soviet embassy, reporting the results to his abrasive boss, Ayrtoun.  Whilst he tries to find his feet he meets Katherine Ward, a beautiful analyst who works in the State Department and they start a tentative relationship.  All the while, Keynes is struggling to get a workable financial deal. 

Washington Shadow is the second book in the Peter Cotton series following the exploits of an economics graduate who works as an intelligence officer (here are my reviews of books 1 and 3).  Whilst the first book was set in Spain, the second sees Cotton move to Washington DC after his old unit is wound up and he waits to find out if he’s going to be demobbed.  Despite winning the war, Britain is on its knees financially and is severely weakened politically with respect to its empire.  The nice hook to the story is John Maynard Keynes presence in the city, trying to negotiate a loan from the Americans.  The first half of the tale is atmospheric and evocative, and the historical contextualisation concerning the relationship between the US and Britain is interesting.  Cotton is a little out of his depth and struggling to work out his role in what seems a fluid situation as the Americans re-organise their intelligence agencies and prepare for a new world order, and he hesitantly starts a relationship, his first serious one since the death of his fiancée to a blitz bomb.  However, in the second half the storyline becomes a little disjointed, bitty and opaque, and rather than Cotton being at the centre of the action with respect to the Keynes negotiations, which might have provided a stronger hook, he’s hovering around the edges with an uncertain role.  Perhaps Monroe is projecting the uncertainty and haphazardness of the British position onto Cotton, but it means the plot fizzles rather than sparkles.  This was a shame as the first half was excellent.  Nevertheless, it’s still an interesting read, with an engaging lead character and intriguing context.

Review of The Maze of Cadiz by Aly Monroe (John Murray, 2008)

September 1944, the Allies have invaded France and Peter Cotton, a freshly recruited British intelligence agent, is sent to Cadiz in Franco’s Spain.  His mission is to find out what has happened to their agent there, who had been reporting on activity in the port but has gone silent, and to then shut down the office.  Cotton arrives first in a sweltering Madrid, then journeys by train to Cadiz where he checks into a dilapidated hotel, is greeted by a local cop and a resentful vice-consulate, and discovers his quarry has been dead for some time, fished out of the sea.  He starts to tidy up the affairs of the agent and close down the office, but gets drawn into investigating the circumstances of his death, all the time shadowed by the local cop who seems to taken a special interest in Cotton and his mission.  It soon becomes apparent that the local agent was involved in more than simply tracking German supply roots.

The first of the Peter Cotton series, The Maze of Cadiz is a spy tale in the Alan Furst mode - understated realism as opposed to a capital T thriller.  Peter Cotton is a young ex-soldier sent to Cadiz on his first mission as a British agent.  He’s somewhat naive, yet oddly worldly; independent and self-sufficient but a little lost in a foreign landscape haunted by civil war politics and conscious of the larger war going on around them and their fragile diplomatic position.  Monroe does a good job of creating an atmosphere of sweltering heat, slow pace of life, and underlying political tensions and poverty, in the process evoking a well realised sense of place.  The prose is nicely written and evocative.  However, whilst the first third of the story is engaging, the unfolding of the plot is overly linear and lacks tension and intrigue, and it’s not clear why Cotton has been sent on a mission that is clearly more suited to someone with more in-field experience and knowledge of Spain, or a small team.  Moreover, the characterisation is quite thin beyond Cotton and Raminez, the local cop, who adds a bit of colour.  The result is a tale of where the reader is firmly placed in Cadiz, but does not quite fully believe what is happening there.  Nonetheless, it’s an enjoyable read, due mostly to its atmospherics and prose.

Review of Icelight by Aly Monroe (John Murray, 2011)

The winter of 1947 and London is in the grip of a big freeze, with limited fuel supplies and food and clothes restricted by rationing.  Peter Cotton has been reassigned from colonial intelligence in the Foreign Office’s Colonial Service to Operation Sea-snake, designed to try and protect valuable assets from American pressure to tighten security and the homophobic and paranoid attentions of MI5, MI6 and a MP who has established his own intelligence network.  One such asset is Alexander Watson, an atomic scientist who is vital to Britain’s attempts to join the nuclear age, who picks up men for fleeting sexual encounters.  Aided by Derek, a rent-boy in South London, and Sergeant Dickie Dawkins of Special Branch, Cotton tries to keep a watching brief on Watson and others, but then the scientist is arrested and he is pulled into the murky world of inter-agency rivalries and their hired help in the form of a pair of Glasgow razor boys.  The issue is no longer simply protecting Watson, but how to also protect himself.

Icelight plunges the reader into the frosty world of London in the Winter of 1947 and the emerging cold war.  Monroe creates a vivid sense of place and of social history, with the shortages of just about everything, the black market, and the feeling that Britain is teetering on the edge of a new age, shorn of its empire and beholden to its ‘special relationship’ with America.  And as relations with the Soviet Union sour and a new political war starts, Monroe focuses on the tensions, rivalries and paranoia that flower within and between British intelligence agencies.  She does so through a captivating but, at times, complex and convoluted plot that involves a fairly large cast of characters.  I don’t mind admitting that occasionally I felt I was wandering in icelight, and at a couple of points I stopped and backtracked to reposition my bearings.  What holds the book together is the premise, some lovely passages of writing (I thought the scene with Cherkesov in a restaurant was wonderful), a general sense of social and historical realism, and some nice characterisation.  Cotton is an interesting lead character, who is worldly, shrewd and standoffish, and is complemented by the more earthy Dawkins, and the other characters are well penned.  Overall and intriguing and entertaining read, that whilst complex is thought provoking and nicely resolved.

Lazy Sunday Service

I bought Icelight by Aly Monroe and Ratlines by Stuart Neville yesterday in the local bookshop.  Given I'd just finished Castle Freeman's Go With Me, I decided to moved Icelight to the front of the TBR pile.  I'm a 130 pages in and enjoying it, but I'm wondering whether I've made a mistake reading book three of the series without having read books one and two.  The main character, Peter Cotton, is a bit of enigma and I suspect I would have a better handle on him and his backstory if I'd read the first two. Oh well, nothing for it but to keep going and backfill at a later date.  Do you read a series in order or skip around?

My full review of Icelight is here.

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Review of The Silver Stain by Paul Johnston
Literary noir crime fiction
Favourite cover of 2012
Review of Broken Dreams by Nick Quantrill
The game is up