The Spy Across the Water: Volume 3 (The Will Flemyng Thrillers)

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Let me tell you, the book, and the series too is so worth it. In fact, although I’m only reviewing the third in the series, the concept gripped me so much so that I just had to read books one and two! In a café next to Broadcasting House, journalist-turned-spy novelist James Naughtie is reminiscing about his glimpses into what John le Carré used to call “the Secret World”.

The book built up as I read it with a terrific air of suspense, mystery and intrigue as it reached its ending

CATEGORIES

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will. And the review is here! So honoured that I’m the first stop on the @headofzeus blog tour for James Naughtie’s newest novel “The Spy Across The Water” The Madness of July is one hell of a debut and one hell of a read. Beautifully written, deftly plotted, skilfully paced, imaginatively conceived.' Robert Littell

Like any great spy novel you are given just enough doubt cast on the characters and the way they are written and portrayed so that your never quite sure about each and their motives. The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there. From one of our most treasured BBC broadcasters, The Spy Across the Water is the third instalment in James Naughtie's brilliant spy series, woven around three brothers bound together through espionage. We live with our history, but it can kill us.

There is a third Flemyng brother, Mungo, who lives on the family estate in the quite beautiful Highlands of Scotland where all the boys were brought up. He is an historian and knows a little (not any real detail) about the lives of Will and Abel. The estate provides an ideal location for clandestine meetings. The peace and quiet of a walk around the loch or up into the hills is in stark contrast to an earlier adrenaline powered gun chase through the streets of Chicago. The change of pace and location works really well. You can really tell that Naughtie loves his native Scotland. He is a BBC radio correspondent and presenter who has spent several decades travelling the world as a journalist. He writes with authority both on international espionage and diplomacy – and also on the Scottish countryside that is so dear to him. The latest in the series, The Spy Across the Water, is set largely in Washington in 1985, with a plot that encompasses the exposure of the Soviet spy Oleg Gordievsky and the fraught negotiations leading up to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Having worked at The Washington Post in the 1980s, Naughtie has produced a splendidly gripping and atmospheric evocation of this febrile period. And while he confronts shadowy adversaries in American streets, and looks for solace at home in the Scottish Highlands, he discovers that his government’s most precious Cold War agent is in mortal danger and needs his help to survive. Abel's unexplained death sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events, beginning with an unexpected glimpse of a face at his funeral. Soon Will finds himself on a dangerous journey into his clandestine past, from conflict in Ireland to the long shadows of the Cold War.