This is, mostly, the story of "super spy" Mark Wolfe, and the family circumstances that take him from the job behind the "HR" desk he's been relegated to, to a dangerous mission of his own undertaking in war-torn Afghanistan. Why? The powers that be have recruited his daughter as a spy, sent her off on a mission of her own, and then, as she goes missing, supposedly from an aid project she's working on, declare she's turned, a double agent, untrustworthy, a danger to national security.
In the middle of all of this lunacy, you watch the transition of a quiet, seemingly affable civil servant whose family have no idea what he does, or any clue about his past, turning back into a super spy, lurching about Afghanistan in pursuit of his daughter, with limited support and connections. He's doing all of that whilst keeping the secret of his past, and his daughter's predicament from his wife and son.
There is an argument that this is a bonkers scenario, which I absolutely agree with, and whether or not you can get past the wrong-footedness of a so called super spy, lurching about, ricocheting from one silly decision to another is probably going to be half the battle of whether or not you enjoy A SPY IN THE BLOOD. Connection with Wolfe will help, as will a willingness to go along for the ride, and not look too hard behind some of the curtains.
For what it's worth I thoroughly enjoyed the rollercoaster, will cheerfully admit that there are a lot of plot points that don't live up to close inspection, and say for the record, it reminded me a bit of early cold war spy novels, where the central hero is anything but an action man, and more stolid, somehow less flash, and more determination.
Which probably also means that at some point you're also going to be wondering about the end of this, which, to this reader's mind, dodged the Hollywood blockbuster stylings by millimetres, instead settling for a chaotic scenario in which some seriously flawed people bounced around, buffeted by some poor decisions made by just about everybody in and out of sight.
A Spy in the Blood
Mark Wolfe was the greatest spy of his generation. Now he's been put out to pasture. Gone are the days of dead-drops beneath railway station clocks in foreign lands that no longer exist - of dry-cleaning, double agents and triple crosses. Now Mark's stuck behind a desk in Vauxhall Cross in charge of recruiting the next wave of spooks, his only excitement fending off advances from deep-pocketed private security companies. Yet his discontent is just another secret to add to the pile.
As far as his wife and children are concerned, Mark is a quiet, affable civil servant who has no idea how to use the TV remote. So when he discovers his daughter, Jody, has an unhealthy obsession with joining MI6, Mark is caught off guard. The Service is keeping her recruitment a secret from him - but why? Then Jody disappears during a mission. And with MI6 washing their hands of her, Mark is thrust back into a terrifying new world of modern espionage.
A Spy in the Blood takes you from modern day London to Afghanistan as a once-legendary spy confronts the complex horrors of modern tradecraft.
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