10th February 2026
In August 1960, Gabriel Dax – an ambitious 30-year old travel writer – is in Léopoldville in the newly independent republic of the Congo. Through a friend from university who is now a Minister in the government, he secures an interview with the charismatic Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba.
Gabriel learns that Lumumba had agreed to the meeting because he wanted to talk – on the record, the interview had to be taped – with a journalist from “a foreign newspaper of repute”. He is shocked at what he is told: “They want to kill me… The British, the Americans, the Belgians, President Eisenhower wants me dead… There are people here sent to kill me… I tell you three names…”
A few days later, Gabriel is sitting in a café near his home in Chelsea when a stranger unexpectedly sits down at his booth. He recognises her as someone who had been reading one of his books on the return flight from Léopoldville to Brussels, though they had not spoken then. After introducing herself as Faith Green, they have a general conversation about the Congo before she informs Gabriel that Lumumba had been shot by a firing squad. She also states that she works for MI6. Quite apart from the immediate shock of hearing of Lumumba’s death, Gabriel is further disconcerted when it takes another month before reports of it reach the mainstream media.
Separately, we learn that Gabriel has occasionally supplemented his writer’s income by doing “favours” for his brother Sefton – an official in the Foreign Office – by delivering letters or packages to various destinations during the course of his overseas travels. When Faith makes a similar request – to buy a small sketch directly from a particular modern artist in Cadiz and then pass it on to a contact in Madrid – Gabriel initially declines, only to change his mind when he is offered a sizeable amount (£200) to carry out the task.
In Madrid, Gabriel befriends another avid reader of his books – an American woman – who (of course) asks him to take a package back to Britain for her cousin in Cambridge. Later, at the airport, when Gabriel realises that there is a schoolboy (or schoolgirl) error in the address on the package, he opens it to find a consignment of drugs. He disposes of the contents minutes before he is picked out by the Spanish customs and police for a “random” search.
There are other odd occurrences: on more than one occasion, Gabriel answers his telephone and is met by an intimidating silence; he is convinced that someone has been searching his flat during one of his absences; his Lumumba interview is spiked; the newspaper editor demands that he hand over his notes and tapes of the interview in accordance with the “small print in your contract” for the travel article… Eventually, after the sudden death of one of his acquaintances – and long after the reader has done so – he asks the obvious rhetorical question: “What in God’s name have I got myself into?”
William Boyd is a very descriptive writer: the opportunity for an adjective is seldom passed over. At their meeting in the Chelsea café, Faith is “wearing a green Loden coat. The stand-up collar of an ivory blouse was visible… The unpermed, loose hair, tousled, shoulder-length, was held in place by a black, velvet Alice band”. At a later rendezvous in his flat, “she was wearing… an over-blouse – a taupe colour, some thick material – and a knife-pleated chequered skirt – greens, ochres, matching her coat. Neat, pointed tawny shoes with a two-inch heel”. In addition, this being the early 1960s, the period detail is clearly presented: Gabriel’s girlfriend – the working-class Lorraine – arrives at his flat “still in her red-and-white Wimpy Bar uniform, a red tabard with broad white piping”.
There is a nice in-joke here, I think, although I am not sure if it was intended. At one point, Faith reads some of the flowery passages from one of Gabriel’s travel books back to him and can’t help herself. “She looked at him, holding her laughter back as best she could. ‘My God. Over the top doesn’t come close!’”.
However, none of this hinders the progress of the narrative, which rattles along. The supporting characters are interesting and well-drawn and, of course, not always exactly as they first appear. In Boyd’s engrossing story, Gabriel’s immersion into the world of the intelligence services is complemented by his efforts in trying to determine the facts of a childhood tragedy that has continued to bring him anguish and haunt his dreams.
Over the second half of the story, Gabriel realises – as again does the reader – that he is being inexorably sucked into the mire of spying and secrets from which there is little or no chance of escape. The plot lines become darker and more serious – there is suspicion, duplicity, betrayal and ruthlessness as well as further sudden death.
Later, just when Gabriel is hoping to resume his previous life and devote himself full-time to his travel writing, Faith Green requests that he undertake another overseas trip for MI6, again with his writing as cover. When he attempts another rejection and a final separation of their ways, her response is not what he wants to hear. “Nobody quits in this business, Gabriel. You know that”.
And we know it as well. The scene is set for more of the story of Gabriel Dax – the reluctant spy – about whom William Boyd has recently produced a sequel: The Predicament. I look forward to catching up with it.
JR Alexander 