BETRAYAL AND THE CAMBRIDGE BLUE

Betrayal lurks around every corner, with potentially lethal consequences, for a British detective-turned-intelligence-agent in Anvik’s old-school spy thriller.

Special Branch police officer Peter Cartwright has personal concerns on his mind after his wife’s death from cancer, but then the MI6 intelligence agency taps him for a special mission to Algeria. The objective seems straightforward enough, as MI6’s head, Abigail West, informs him: Cartwright must neutralize a mole who’s compromising the agency’s objectives with damaging leaks to Islamic terrorists. Peter is paired with Chloe, a specialist at ferreting out such spies. It’s a mission that will play out under “Big Boys’ Rules,” as Peter puts it,where fingernail pulling is just another trick of the trade, and, if all else fails, “take no prisoners, and run for home.”Naturally, nothing goes according to plan from the start of the novel, during which Peter snatches Chloe from a Libyan safe house amid a hail of gunfire. Anvik is at their best when evoking the conflicting emotions that surface in the perpetually insecure world of spycraft—a dirty business in which paranoia is an everyday feature. The title even nods to a 1950s-era scandal, Abigail reminds Peter, when a group of double agents inflicted enormous damage simply by “masquerading as patriots.” Yet the pace slackens somewhat after the slam-bang opening, yielding to an extended training-camp trawl that will feel readily familiar to any fan of Ken Follett’s or Ian Fleming’s work. It takes nearly a third of the book before the action resumes in such offbeat locales as Calgary and Buenos Aires, which finds Cartwright and company back on firmer ground. In the end, though, this is a solid outing that effectively allows readers to experience a tale of treason and treachery from the comfort of their easy chair.

An often enjoyable spy novel, despite some uneven pacing.