The predicament A novel

Reluctant spy Gabriel Dax, first seen in Gabriel's Moon (2024), is once again pulled into a grand conspiracy when what he wants to do is research and write new travel books. Dax is much more of an active participant than in his previous outing; he is an assured presence surrounded by a world defined by double-crossing and mistrust. Now a double agent, Dax meets with--and is well remunerated by--Soviet spies. Faith Green, Dax's off-and-on-again lover at MI6, once again uses his writerly credentials, first to gather intelligence in Guatemala alongside the CIA before moving on to Berlin, which leads to a breathless conclusion as Dax and others work to thwart a plot against President Kennedy. Like his character, Boyd is much more at home in the genre than in the previous outing, and this John Le Carré-esque Cold War thriller is something rare--a sequel that surpasses the original. Full of wry humor, this is a compelling novel full of intrigue, romance, and, once again, plenty of alcohol.

Mistake-prone amateur spy Gabriel Dax romps through two minor international crises of the early 1960s in Boyd's shrewd latest espionage tale (after Gabriel's Moon). A professional travel writer with no training in spycraft, Dax works for MI6 unofficially, under the auspices of his sometime-girlfriend, agent Faith Green. Though he'd prefer to withdraw to his cottage in East Sussex and continue working on his new book about the great rivers of the world, Dax is sent to Guatemala in March 1963 to check on the political rise of a labor leader trying to unseat the country's CIA-backed military government. Things quickly get hairy: Dax is threatened, then stabbed, by thugs who oppose his sniffing around. He recovers in England before Faith sends him to Berlin to check out reports that assassins may be targeting President John F. Kennedy during a weeklong visit. Dax bumbles his way through that mission, helping thwart disaster via a string of accidentally heroic acts inspired by his instincts as a writer. Readers will be charmed by Dax's tendency to fail upward, and Boyd smoothly incorporates real history into his wildly entertaining plot. This is a treat. Agent: Grainne Fox, UTA. (Nov.)

Travel writer Gabriel Dax, recruited by MI6, continent-hops from Guatemala to London to Berlin on agency business. Introduced inGabriel's Moon (2024), Dax has his hands full between his spying and his book-writing, which gives him a handy cover for his undercover work. In March 1963 he is sent to Guatemala to observe the charismatic "Padre Tiago," an activist ex-priest who may become president. No sooner does Gabriel arrive than a coup breaks out; Padre Tiago is killed, as is his promise to nationalize the all-powerful United Fruit's plantations and return them to the workers. Dax returns to England, where he reignites the passionate (on his end) affair with Faith Green, his manipulative MI6 boss and "puppet-mistress." She is a prime topic of his discussions with his shrink, Katerina Haas, who encourages him to be his "true self"--a concept with which this novel about people who aren't what they seem has a lot of fun. Then he's sent to Germany to work with a young female CIA agent in tracking Dean Furlan, a shady businessman he encountered in Guatemala; Furlan may have orchestrated two recent attempts to kill President Kennedy in the U.S. and is now in Berlin, a few weeks prior to JFK's state visit. The novel breezes along, with Gabriel making like James Bond, until an anticlimactic epilogue dated November 22, 1963, implies that events in Berlin explain what happened in Dallas. Few literary novelists are as comfortable with espionage tropes as Boyd, who uses the genre as a platform for another of his comically flawed, self-delusional protagonists. An undeveloped subplot involving a Russian triple agent seems likely to be picked up in the next Dax novel. A thriller that's always in motion but, unlike its hero, always knows where it's going. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.