William Boyd once wrote a Bond novel, Solo, but Gabriel Dax, the spy in The Predicament, is, unlike Bond, only reluctantly in the espionage business and really would like to devote himself full time to his other job, as a travel writer. Right now he’s finishing off his book on rivers, which serves as a useful cover for whatever country he’s being sent to by his beautiful MI6 boss, with whom he’s having an intermittent affair.
To begin with, it’s Guatemala, whose capital does have a river but is also the scene of deplorable CIA skulduggery in the interests of global capitalism. Dax is, in fact, an unwitting stooge, and as if that wasn’t enough he’s also being watched in London by his Russian minders (he’s a double agent), who at least have taste: they pay him in banknotes (this is 1963) inserted into Tolstoy novels. Quite how the Russians never notice his dealings with his MI6 boss, the very woman they are interested in, is a mystery that is never quite resolved.
