‘Ware the warlords of our modern times!’

A Spy Alone (Oxford Spy Ring #1) by Charles Beaumont     

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Slow start to what becomes a rather compelling story of international intrigue, based mainly on Russian oligarch connections.

Simon Sharmon is our key player, an ex Oxford man, ex intelligence officer who’s operating freelance now.

An acquaintance, Marcus Peebles, employs Simon to look into a mid level oligarch Georgy Sidorov, with reference to an endowerment to Sharmon’s Oxford College, especially at this time of the war in Ukraine.

The action switches between Simon’s Oxford student days, the late nineties and early 2000’s to the mid 2000’s—from Ukraine and Crimea, to the present.

By the end I’m feeling totally paranoid, haunted by the vision of a net of various intelligence agents and investigators from a variety of countries crisscrossing the United Kingdom like one of those diagrams of millions of interconnecting internet webs. Only to my mind they’re spiders webs spinning out of control in the underbelly of our world. Grrr! But who or what’s at the center?

Brexit comes in for a drubbing. Apparently forces were at work to make it happen, leaving Europe vulnerable and open to being ravaged by the Russian Bear. Or is it just the oligarchs and powerful corporations hiding their activities behind various shell companies? If I wasn’t paranoid before with the rise of populism, the spread of international drug lords, human trafficking, the craziness of Putin and his cronies, Britain isolating itself—then I am now. I could be wearing an al foil hat soon!

The question of was there an Oxford spy ring to equal the Cambridge fifties one of Blunt et.al. resonates and Simon’s investigations uncover so much more. Simon’s digging opens up a minefield of boggling possibilities.

An exciting thriller, seemly all too accurate, that left me breathless in its magnitude.

The fact that it’s written by an ex intelligence officer sends cold shivers down my spine.

Beaumont’s certainly up there with my favorite spy writers. The mind games of Le Carré are recalled.

A Canelo ARC via NetGalley.                                              

Many thanks to the author and publisher.