The second Septimus Brass novel is another illustration of just how widely John Fullerton’s spy fiction ranges. He spans the genre from Cold War to contemporary espionage, and from Afghanistan to Beijing, via Russia to London, which is where we find ourselves in How Not to Kill a Spy.
After dealing with the aftermath of a devastating revenge plot against the establishment in Armistice Day, out in January 2024, Septimus Brass of the National Crime Agency once again works with the Britain’s security services, but it’s an uneasy alliance. Clearly Fullerton is keen to keep the writing politically charged but, maybe this second novel is a bit more contemplative, less full-on with the action. Once again we are in the murky, febrile world of geopolitics and How Not to Kill a Spy kicks off as Jessica Bow reports her colleague missing. David Jones has been gone for eight days and alarm bells start ringing when the police realise Jones works for Secret Intelligence Service.
His body is discovered in unusual circumstances at his flat. First assumptions are suicide or misadventure – a kinky sex game gone wrong, perhaps? You may sense where the broad inspiration for this novel comes from – in 2010, a young man who worked for SIS was found dead in his flat inside a huge holdall. This is a not about that tragic death but it is a jumping off point for Fullerton’s imagination. Together with colleague Skeeter, Brass finds that it’s not possible to lock oneself inside the bag Jones was found in, instantly questioning the auto-erotic accidental asphyxia theory.
Before Brass shares that info, Deputy Director General of SIS/MI6, Bridie Connor, the woman behind Brass’s troubled relationship with the service in the last novel, calls a meeting to discuss the case – or rather to shut it down. The consensus is that this is a personal tragedy not a security matter. MI6 and the police want the enquiry off the books. Jones was, after all, just an ordinary member of the research staff, not a field agent and therefore not significant enough to target.
Brass isn’t happy with the haste with which everyone wants this to go away and things get even more interesting when he is contacted by Russian defector Yuri Lomov, a former KGB/SVR colonel, who tells him a very different story. Pointing to the number of Russian state-sanctioned murders across Europe, including the novichok incident in Salisbury, Lomov thinks Jones was just the latest victim in a long line of killings.
He adds that Jones was operational, not just a researcher, and perhaps knew something the Russians desperately wanted to keep secret. It’s incendiary stuff on a slow burn fuse, the meat and bread of a spy novel. Brass’ scepticism and natural curiosity come to the fore. Rather than walk away from the inquiry he is now going to find out what’s behind Jones’ death, with or without official support, against the odds and with no small amount of danger involved. It’s not long before he’s at odds with everyone else.
Jessica Bow, the woman who started all this with a phone call, is proving hard to find. Another disappearing agent begins to make SIS look incompetent, if not totally inept, and a big American private security company is ready to step in to save the day… but at what cost? It’s a whole new strand to the story complicating things for Bridie. The rush to privatise everything in the real world underpins this troubling but sadly plausible element of the story.
There’s a healthy dose of irreverence and scepticism about Fullerton’s writing, which plays well in a slightly cynical spy novel. This one feels a bit darker than Armistice Day, but still not full le Carré. You can sense it in a quiet distain for government failure, hypocrisy and incompetence around intelligence and a deep social context is welcomed by many crime fiction lovers though I know that doesn’t please everyone. I like government values being questioned, such as they are, and the tilt at declining public services occasioned by creeping privatisation, rampant profit seeking and the other side of the coin, drastic cost cutting.
There’s office politics-level absurdity, fiefdoms, denial of responsibility and so on which show up in the humour in the novel to balance against the dark. The occasional sharp observations of errant behaviour are followed by a serious plot points. From the reporting of the missing agent to the infighting and edgy relationships between characters, this is a classic spy thriller set up, and Brass is a strong enough character to drive this.
There’s no doubt Fullerton’s vast experience as a journalist, across the world, including reporting on no less than 12 wars, and his part-time contract work for MI6/SIS, infuse his writing.
Also see Mick Herron’s Slough House series, which sets the bar in contemporary espionage.
Partisan Books
Print/Kindle
£1.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
