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Long-suffering spy Bernard Samson has, against all the odds, enticed a Soviet agent to defect to London – but this proves to be the start of something even bigger. For he learns that there is treachery within his own Service, and no one is free from suspicion. To discover who really controls the game of spies, he must attempt a desperate gamble. I read this shortly after reading the highly acclaimed John Le Carre novel "Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy" and it took me a while for me to separate this book from that one, particularly the main character Harry Tower who would fit right in the Le Carre novel. I liked this much better than Tinker, Tailor, Solider Spy. Texan billionaire General Midwinter will stop at nothing to bring down the USSR – even if it puts the whole world at risk. Tom Bradby’s “Yesterday’s Spy” is a very well-written spy novel set in 1953 Iran. Part historical novel, part thriller, part mystery, and part espionage tale, it is also a novel of interesting characters playing “the great game” for very high stakes. My thanks to Random House U.K. Transworld Publishers for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Yesterday’s Spy’ by Tom Bradby. This is the tenth novel by Bradby, a British political journalist and correspondent.
Do you believe in God?’ Julie asked. ‘No. But I’m old enough to recognize that we simply have no idea what lies beyond the boundaries of our knowledge and to take some comfort from that ignorance.” Well written, Mr. Bradby takes us to a time and place we know very little about, but that helped shape today’s world. The action is fast-paced and intense, the plot believable, the characters well formed. Another fine read by Mr. Bradby. From the latest Scandinavian serial killer to Golden Age detective stories, we love our crime novels! Thank you to the author, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Len Deighton books in order:
Ageing Hollywood star Marshall Stone is scared. Scared that the parts are drying up. Scared of being forgotten. So when he hears an eminent author is writing his biography, Stone siezes the chance of immortality. But painful memories and suppressed scandals soon threaten to destroy the carefully-constructed fiction of his life.
The emerging story of the forces behind the coup, including both British and Americans as well as senior figures in the Iranian police and army. Harry Towers is a spy with British intelligence who has reached the end of his career, and has also lost his wife to suicide, and his son to both neglect and apathy. Harry receives a call from that his son has gone missing in Iran, a country that Harry had some dealings with in the past, and knows from current work at his job, is ripe for revolution. With American help. Harry travels to Iran, finding the country much worse than he expected, and also much more dangerous. For his son was writing articles about powerful people, who might not like what is being said about them. The more Harry digs the more he wonders if the many sins of his past are catching up with him, and that he and his son are in much more danger than he thought. Sean Tower is a reporter for The Guardian. He stayed in Iran, rather than returning to university in England, partly as a rebellion against his distant father. His mother Amanda has recently died, widening the rift between father and son. Neither understands the other. However, Tehran is becoming a dangerous place.Bernard Samson is a spy on the run. But in the murky streets of Berlin, he knows where to hide. Wanted for an act of treachery he has not committed, he must not only escape the grasp of London Central, but get to the bottom of a tangled conspiracy that is about to change everything. Tom Bradby's cold war thriller features a British spy called Harry Tower, who dashes to Iran in search of his son Sean, a journalist who has gone missing. The tale is set mostly in 1953 at the time of an Iranian coup d'état, in which the British and American governments were attempting to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh (who was left leaning) in favour of the Shah. [They were of course successful and the Shah ruled as absolute monarch with American support until 1979 when he was deposed in the Islamic revolution]. Mr. Bradby is equally adept at weaving the political history of the time into his story, including an explanation of how important Iranian oil was to the U.S. and Britain, and why, as well as the attitudes those nations held and the actions they undertook that made them so unpopular with certain segments of Iranian society. Those interested in the history of the Shah’s return to power (setting the stage for his ouster a quarter of a century later) may find “Yesterday’s Spy” particularly illuminating. This is the first book by Tom Bradby that I have read. His writing style is polished and easy to read. I will certainly be reading more books by him.
thrillers featuring MI6 operative Kate Henderson. As the title suggests in this standalone thriller he has looked to the past history of the British Intelligence Service. This is a love story because it’s about Harry and Amanda and Sean and Shahnaz. Amanda committed suicide and Bradby blends her story into the relationship between father and son very skilfully. Can Harry not only find Sean but reconcile with him about the family’s past? Both this and the spy story work. Harry and his journalist son Sean see eye-to-eye on almost nothing and barely speak. But when Sean disappears in Iran after writing an article critical of certain “powers-that-be,” Harry’s on the next plane to Teheran to find him. Harry meets Sean’s Iranian girlfriend, Shahnaz, and together, they begin the search for Sean. That hunt is complicated by civil unrest in Iran caused by American/British attempts to replace socialist Prime Minister Mossadegh with the Shah to ensure access to Iranian oil. It’s even further complicated by something the Americans are demanding from the British, something Harry won’t like very much.My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Grove Atlantic for an advanced copy of this new historical spy story. Deception has a nasty habit of eating away at people. Lying about your job to your family and neighbors. Lying to your co- workers about the work that you are doing. Lying about the work to your government who is lying about the work they don't want to know what you are doing. Lying to yourself about the importance of what you do, though all everything that exists around you is built up on a very precarious pedestal, and can fall all away with just one truth. Tom Bradby in the historical thriller Yesterday's Son shows the price of deception on one man and his attempt to fix a legacy of wrongs for his only son's safety.
We meet our spy, Harry, as he finds out his son has gone missing in Tehran, but what was he really doing there…Harry makes it his mission to find out with adventures and personal introspective along the way ( re his past ) Today, with our eyes clouded by decades of history of the Islamic Republic, we may find it difficult to imagine the dynamics of Iranian society in the 1940s and 50s. The stakes couldn’t have been higher. “Without the discovery of an inexhaustible supply of oil in Iran, the British Empire would never have won two world wars.” But the British effectively stole that oil, leaving the large and growing Iranian public hungry and desperate. And the resulting rise of a populist regime under Mohammad Mosaddegh was only one of the threats to the West. The Soviet Union was actively seeking to seize power in Tehran as well. For once, the Eisenhower Administration’s crusade against Communism around the world may have acted against a genuine threat there . . . or at least one that could be more easily rationalized than all the others that followed in Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile. The narrative also contains chapters set during the 1930s-40s that provide more details of Harry’s earlier life and career. Still, he might be considered a has-been by some but in 1953 he is still able to breeze into 10 Downing Street and is on friendly terms with the PM, Sir Winston Churchill. This I enjoyed but was very different to the trilogy, the historical information is amazing and anyone with an interest in Iranian local and world politics in the 1950’s will find it a mustSet mostly in Iran, August 1953 - a period of political unrest where a transfer of power sees the Prime Minister replaced by an army general, Yesterday's Spy follows SIS operative, Harry Tower, one-time Maths student at Cambridge University, as he searches for his son, Sean, an investigative journalist who it appears has uncovered the financial details of a company based in Tehran, pointing to a number of shareholders making ‘a killing’ – before disappearing. Deep in the South American jungle the MAMista Marxist revolutionaries are fighting a hopeless, protracted war against a dictator – while the CIA see an opportunity. Amid the turmoil, three very different people – a doctor, a young firebrand and an educated revolutionary – find themselves thrown together and trapped at the heart of a battle where the enemy is uncertain, and there can be no winners. Harry turns out to an all action hero as the plot unfolds. It’s much easier to suspend belief when watching these heroics on TV a lot harder with the written word. The role of Shaznah didn’t feel believable.
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