The Predicament by William Boyd review: 'elegant, intelligent and carefully written'
With travel writer and secret service agent Gabriel Dax, William Boyd has created a character who is far more interesting than the heroes of most espionage novels, writes Allan Massie
William Boyd’s new novel is the second featuring a hero who combines being an author - a successful writer of travel books - and a secret service agent. Boyd is, I think, of Scottish (or Anglo-Scottish in his case) novelists, our most accomplished craftsman. He started young, writing his first novel in his twenties. That first novel, A Good Man in Africa, was an immediate hit, and he has remained on top of his game ever since. His novels are elegant, intelligent and carefully written; he never insults his reader.
This new novel featuring Gabriel Dax is set in England, Central America and Germany. Dax is apparently an MI6 agent, but not exactly a professional, rather a semi-professional. Being a travel writer is, of course, a good cover for espionage work and this makes him rather an old-fashioned character, or this an old-fashioned book.
Nowadays, we expect spies to be professional and very often grimly professional. Here, Boyd doesn't impose a great deal of technical expertise on the reader. In this sense, The Predicament reminds one of works of Hammond Innes or even Ian Fleming, whose books Boyd himself may have read when he was growing up in the late 1960s.
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Dax is not a full-time spy. He is merely an occasional recruit, and, remarkably, he works for the other side as well. The novel begins in London, where Dax is summoned to a meeting by his handler and unrequited love interest, Faith Green. We are also introduced – or re-introduced for those who have read the opening book of the series, Gabriel’s Moon – to his psychoanalyst. This character is a convincing nod to the 60s, when almost all writers or similarly occupied people had a psychoanalyst, even if they were not American.
Curiously, at the same time as being an agent for the British Secret Service, Dax has, at his handler's instructions, become a double agent, passing and receiving information to and from the Russians in return for generous payment.
The action swings to Guatemala, which was, of course, from the end of the second World War into the 1960s, a dependent of the United States and dominated by the extraordinarily successful and highly corrupt United Fruit Company, which in real life fostered several coups and attempted coups. In Latin America, Dax meets an idealistic priest and, since Guatemala is almost the headquarters of the CIA, we know that his future is likely to be short. Later, we find Dax in Germany in 1963, the year of President Kennedy's visit to West Germany where he proclaimed himself “Ein Berliner”.
It would be wrong to disclose what happens next, except that it has been prepared for - for the reader - by the operations in Guatemala. Dax is an interesting character, far more interesting than the heroes of most espionage novels. He does not, admittedly, do much practical espionage - he spends most of his time in conversation and drinking and smoking in the bars in Guatemala, and then subsequently in Berlin. But he is alert, sympathetic and troubled. He finds violence disturbing, his own violence particularly.
The plot, after what follows in Guatemala and the visit of Kennedy to Berlin, will prepare the reader for The Predicament: Kennedy's assassination later that year. There will never, I suppose, be an end of books about that killing. Interestingly, however, while not giving us an entirely new angle on it, Boyd pens an extremely interesting and plausible version of what happened in Dallas on that fateful afternoon.
What is so pleasing about this novel is that Boyd, unusually, is an author who gives the impression of knowing precisely what he is doing; of how to please the reader. Sometimes one finds novelists who seem more concerned to please themselves. Boyd writes elegant prose and tells a convincing story, as he has been doing now for nearly 45 years. The settings are believable and the characters make sense, too, qualities that are not always to be found in espionage novels.
There is an understanding of what is moral and what is not moral. Very often morality disappears from consideration, particularly in spy novels. But here there is a sense, and it is interesting, that Dax is troubled by his involvement. Even if he believes he is on the side of good, he is vexed by his actions and by the damage that he does to others and to himself.
By the end of the novel, he seems to have taken a step further with Faith. I look forward to further steps in the third instalment of this tremendous series.
The Predicament, by William Boyd, Viking, £20
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