Spying for this government is not a job I'd want to take, especially right out of Sixth Form.
Nonetheless, that is the situation for our protagonist in Topaz, a spy thriller by Richard Robinson. This review was done as part of a Reading Between the Lines blog tour organised by Lynsey Adams.
Blurb
It’s the summer of 1995. The US Peace Envoy, Fred Martinson, begins to broker a peace deal for Northern Ireland. The world holds its breath as the first tentative steps are taken.
Jones, an 18-year-old from suburban England, has stumbled through education and yearns to be a football reporter. He is offered a place at Milton College, a former secretarial school with a clandestine partnership with GCHQ in seeking the communication stars of the future.
Before he knows it, Jones has been recruited, paired with Jenny Richmond, who is every bit his equal, and sent to Northern Ireland to undertake skills development and resilience testing with the Young Communicators Unit (YCU).
Training becomes a matter of life and death when a group of trainee spies learning on the job are betrayed to their death, and their most promising member, Isadora Brown, is taken hostage. MI5 and YCU are sent a video of her reading demands by a mysterious organisation called Red Line.
What if a group of young trainees were forced onto the frontline to deal with one of the most sensitive issues in UK history? What if political relations were so sensitive at the end of The Cold War, that only a group of deniable students could change history and keep super powers from ruining the first steps of a peace deal in Northern Ireland?
It’s a race against the clock to find and free Isadora, and make sure the US peace talks aren’t sent up in flames.
But who, exactly, is betraying who?
Review
Topaz was a gripping read which I couldn't put down.
Jones makes for an interesting protagonist who was recruited for his tendency to make friends in pubs and doesn't seem to know what he wants to do with his life. The first chapter has him working a summer job as a labourer after finishing his A Levels, which also reveals that he's afraid of heights. It's mentioned that he barely revised and was pressured by his parents into applying to university, only for his grades to dash that. As someone who had a rough time with A Levels (to the point that it put me off going to uni for six years), I can relate to that situation, and it made me want to follow his journey. His uncanny ability to stumble through things seems reminiscent of Richard Hannay.
The other characters are great too: Jenny Richmond is introduced as a consummate professional in stark contrast to the more laid-back Jones, but they quickly develop a strong working relationship. Isadora also gets some moments to shine as she thinks on her feet. We also have Orla Massey, the local police inspector who is often at odds with the intelligence services (especially Jones' handler Virginia Curry).
While there are some aspects of mass surveillance which really do not sit well with me, this is nonetheless a great story with a sense of mystery and intrigue that drew me in.
Topaz is available from Amazon here.
About the Author
He is currently the CEO of Hourglass, the UK’s only charity focused on ending the abuse and neglect of older people, a job he applied for after a family experience of neglect.
Richard wrote his first novel in the early 2000s but this has yet to see the light of day. Instead, he started with a new idea in 2020 and Topaz was born. He has written two more in the Topaz Files series, Wild Flowers and The Mainstay, which are expected to be published in 2024.
He is also happily in the dugout for Boxford Rovers F.C. on a Saturday, a committed cratedigger (vinyl collector) and can occasionally be seen in the stands at Loftus Road and Windsor Park.
Happy writing.
.png)
