Review: GABRIEL'S MOON, William Boyd

• 
   This edition read as an e-book on my Kindle
  
• An Amazon Best Book of the Month (Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense)
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CW1B7PC7
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking, September 5, 2024
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 263 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241542095 

Synopsis (Amazon)

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a tragedy: every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into the shadows of espionage.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into duplicity. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story . . .

In his most exhilarating novel yet, William Boyd transports you from the vibrant streets of sixties London to the sun-soaked cobbles of Cadiz and the frosty squares of Warsaw in this thrilling adventure. 

My Take

Here is one slightly outside my comfort zone, not really crime fiction but a tale of espionage, the story of how a man becomes trapped into becoming a spy, a conveyor of packages and messages, working for MI 6, a carefully layered story.

I enjoyed the historical references too, to a period of that I remember quite well. 

My rating: 4.7

About the author

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series. His books have won many literary awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the Costa Book Award. He was named a Granta Best Young Novelist in 1983, and in 2005, he was awarded the CBE. Boyd is married and divides his time between London and southwest France.