Ever since David McCloskey arrived with his debut espionage novel Damascus Station in 2021, we’ve looked forward to the next, and the next. It was followed by Moscow X, The Seventh Floor and The Persian, and the former CIA analyst has earned a reputation as a terrific author of spy novels, joining the new breed alongside the likes of Mick Herron and William Boyd. From the opening scene of his new thriller, London Station, you know you’re once again in good hands. What makes McCloskey’s novels such a pleasure to read are the strong characters, the intricate plots and just enough humour to make the characters real and engaging.
Again we join CIA officer Artemis Aphrodite Procter, who plunges us straight into hot water. Procter likes to run ops. And she’s thought up a good one, to make a cold pitch to a Chinese counterintelligence officer visiting London, in the hope of finding out why Western assets in China are going dark.
Her plan, though, violates all sorts of written and unwritten rules. First, CIA’s London Station is unaware of it. And second – a potentially felonious second – the CIA and MI6 don’t tread on each other’s territory. It’s all part of the traditions of the so-called special relationship between the US and UK. The opportunity is just too good, though, and she doesn’t pass it up. Alas, calamity ensues, and she is unmasked, literally.
When Procter is flown home to Washington to face the music, a new administration has been installed, with a new hierarchy in the CIA. Not that she especially got along with the old crew, but these ones know nothing about the espionage game and don’t care to learn. The new CIA Director is Bobby Jerome, head of a Texas firm called BJ Lenore, the ‘largest residential home builder in the United States.’ He believes the agency is another bloated, out-of-control government bureaucracy, and the new president wants him to cut it down to size. He and his team of private sector executives take on the task with gusto.
Jerome contends that the Brits are putting a lot less than the US is into maintaining the special relationship, while getting a lot more out of it. People who don’t agree with him are looking for new jobs, including the popular chief of London Station, Charlie Claire. Procter’s usually self-defeating candour is a plus in this regime, especially when Jerome realises her attitude toward the Brits isn’t that different from his own. Pick-pockets, they agree.
The Brits are angry and the Americans too. Not only did Procter attempt an unauthorised op on British territory, with false UK ID, Bobby Jerome’s first shocking move was to decline to help MI6 extract an agent in trouble in Iran. Then he replaces Charlie Claire with Procter. When she lands in London again, she’s in hostile territory. The more so because Bobby has sent along a young know-it-all associate to keep an eye on her and to develop a plan for restructuring the delicate and vitally important special relationship.
But an underlying question is: are both spy agencies hopelessly out-of-date? On the horizon and approaching fast is a privately run tech company with what seems like near-unlimited capacity and willingness to ferret out secrets.
MI6 operatives who feel betrayed, Charlie Claire and his allies – all are out for revenge. But how to engineer that? And how far will they go? Several interesting plotlines start rolling and, while you know that in some way they may all collide, it isn’t easy to predict how. Author McCloskey must work surrounded by a blizzard of post-it notes!
McCloskey’s characters aren’t just players on a chessboard, moving in prescribed ways. They have strengths and weaknesses. Foibles. Stuff going on in their lives. For example, the MI6 operative who lost his agent in Iran is back in England with his pregnant wife, recovering from injuries inflicted by Iranian border security. Maybe he didn’t have much confidence in the man the Iranians captured on his watch, but for him the CIA’s refusal to help is unforgivable. One of the British staffers in London Station’s communications office is in love with the ousted Charlie Claire and spiralling into a depression. Unwilling to expose her mental health problems to an approved professional, she’s found herself a therapist on LinkedIn. And Theresa Harrington-Cole, head of MI6, won’t forget the dismissive and insulting way Bobby has treated her from their first meeting.
It’s a stew of possibilities bubbling on the front burner on both sides of the Atlantic. If you like a story packed with intrigue, deception and quick-thinking, you’ve found it. Also, McCloskey includes a bit of homage to other spy writers, past and present, when he refers to ‘being downwind from Jackson Lamb’ (Slough House), ‘that TV show about the ambassador lady here’ (The Diplomat) and the Chinese agent’s incriminating notebook huddled with others on a shelf: ‘Plain sight was often the wisest hiding spot’ – straight out of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter.
David McCloskey is one of several spy fiction authors we recommend for anyone who loved the show Slow Horses, has read the Slough House series, and wants more. Find out more here. In fact, we recommend him in his own right.
Swift Press
Print/Kindle/iBook
£14.79
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
