Book Review: A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman
A tightly paced debut with a fabulously original premise.
Headline, 2024
My cover fell apart as soon as their interrogators gave it the slightest digital prod. Non-existent addresses, no email or website for the company I was supposed to be working for. No breadcrumbs. No history. They picked my story apart like they were deboning a chicken.
On trend with even more (literary) agents and espionage fiction, David Goodman’s A Reluctant Spy has an original premise so obvious, you wish you’d thought of it yourself. Jamie Tulloch is a Scottish logistics whizz with few friends and fewer relationships, keeping everyone at arm’s length for good reason: he’s a Legend, a civilian who lends his identity to British Intelligence in exchange for career opportunities. After all, a digital footprint is difficult to fake, so why not simply borrow the real thing? When Tulloch is on the cusp of (temporarily) stepping out of his own life at Charles de Galle Airport, things begin to go awry.
What follows is a frenetic, heart-thumping adventure flitting between London and Zanzibar, as a gung-ho Tulloch navigates the darker side of geopolitics, hurtling towards an action-packed and explosive climax. There's a lovely signed edition of A Reluctant Spy from Goldsboro Books, available on their website.
This review originally appeared in Dispatch Edition #1.
The Dispatch is a monthly roundup by British speculative fiction writer, Jordan Acosta. News, short reviews and more, published every first Thursday. You can subscribe at jordanacosta.co, and read previous editions, here.
