William Boyd can turn his hand to any genre. He’s been responsible for some brilliant, Evelyn Waugh-like farces including ‘A Good Man in Africa’ and ‘Stars and Bars’. He’s also written romantic, foreign adventures such as ‘The Blue Afternoon’, and several “whole life” novels including perhaps his most feted book ‘Any Human Heart’. But he’s also found time to hit readers up with some cracking spy thrillers – such as ‘Restless’ – and ‘Gabriel’s Moon’ is very much in that vein. It’s the early sixties and Gabriel Dax is earning his crust as a reporter and a travel writer. While undertaking research for a new book somewhere in Central Africa he, through a contact, manages to secure an interview with a recently installed President. The President tells Gabriel that some people are trying to kill him. On returning to London, Gabriel finds that his newspaper is not in the least bit interested in his story. Someone who does take an interest, however, and an interest in Gabriel in particular, is enigmatic MI6 handler Faith Green. She manages to convince Gabriel to travel to Franco’s Spain to buy a drawing from a surrealist artist – for reasons she won’t explain. And so begins a deliciously twisty tale in the best spy-thriller tradition, with accidental spy Gabriel cast headlong into the hot furnace of cold-war intrigue. It’s a story full of brio and sly skulduggery – populated with colourful characters – and on finishing it I had to physically restrain myself from punching the air when I learned it’s just the first in a series. RM

Published by Viking