Queen And Country

I can’t help feeling that Alan Judd’s series about Charles Thoroughgood would make an excellent TV series. The books have a vibe that's somewhere between Morse and Smiley and they are very readable.

I came to these novels late and have (through necessity) read many of them out of sequence. Queen & Country is the latest – Book 7 in a series that started back in 1981 when the protagonist, Charles Thoroughgood, was serving in the British Army in Northern Ireland. Now he’s the recently retired, former Chief of MI6.

Thoroughgood is contacted by an ex-colleague after a small number of Russian defectors who had spied for MI6, and now lived in England have died suddenly and unexpectedly. The security services believe the cause to be a new, untraceable poison that’s delivered by aerosol spray. One of the victims had been an agent of Thoroughgood’ s and they ask him to help.

I’m deliberately keeping the plot details light here because if you decide to read this you’ll enjoy it immeasurably more if you don’t know too much. It is, in fact, a somewhat old-fashioned tale of espionage set in the present day.

I like these books but find it difficult to pin down why. They aren’t adrenaline-charged and sometimes the narrative is almost mundane. But Alan Judd has a knack of creating characters you enjoy reading about. He paints a picture that’s not too detailed, which allows your imagination to decide how they look, speak and behave. In your head you feel you know these people and you care about what they do.

I’m a fan of thrillers and fast-paced action stories, so these books mark a bit of a departure from my normal reading list. But if you get the chance to give them a try, take a punt and see if you like them too. I didn’t want to put this one down.
Review by: Cornish Eskimo