Friends and Traitors has more of the feel of a literary novel than thriller but to me, that is not a bad thing. It’s the latest in the series featuring Freddie Troy (and the first I’ve read) and follows his interactions with British diplomat and Soviet agent Guy Burgess through the mid-twentieth century.

Freddie is the son of a Russian émigré, a man who is wealthy and well connected, a newspaper proprietor and baronet. However his father, a widely read and intellectually curious man, is all too aware of his precarious status and that public opinion could turn at any moment against him and his family.

Freddie embraces the outsider identity by electing not to join the normal professions of the upper classes. Instead he has decided to be a police officer. The book begins with a dinner party at his father’s home, where he first meets Burgess, shortly before he is due to start at Hendon police college.

They have a number of chance encounters in the years before Burgess’ defection and the book briefly shifts into Burgess’ point of view to show us his defection to Moscow and the shape his life takes afterwards. But it is only about two-thirds of the way into the book, when Troy’s family holiday in Vienna is thrown into chaos by a meeting Burgess has engineered, that the thriller element of the story begins.

Freddie’s relationship with Burgess is a nuanced one. He is aware of the artifice of Burgess’s public persona, but still somehow intrigued by him, as if watching a great performer at work.

This is a fragmentary story but an atmospheric one. I enjoyed Troy’s wonderfully flamboyant family, his relationships with police colleagues, his opinions on a changing society and the interweaving of real historical figures and events. The depiction of the Blitz was particularly vivid.

Friends and Traitors gives a fascinating perspective on the Establishment of the time, what has changed – and what hasn’t. There are references to Troy’s past cases, to events in his life going on in the background, and to the way Troy, with his Russian language skills and unique connections, has previously been co-opted into espionage cases. I hope these aren’t spoilers for the earlier novels, as I’m now very keen to read more about Freddie Troy.

After a pause of some years, during which he has introduced the character of Joe Wilderness (Then We Take Berlin, The Unfortunate Englishman) John Lawton re-introduces his most beguiling character, Frederick Troy. Troy is the son of a Russian emigré-turned-newspaper-baron, but he has turned his back on that world (if not its riches and status) to become a London copper. Learning his trade as a bobby on the beat in WWII London, he rises to become one of the top policemen of his generation. His older brother, Sir Rodyon ‘Rod’ Troy has turned to politics, and in this novel he is Shadow Home Secretary in the 1950s Labour Opposition of Hugh Gaitskell.

Friends and Traitors focuses mostly on the 1951 defection – and its aftermath – of intelligence officer Guy Burgess, to the Soviet Union. A huge embarrassment to the British government at the time, it was also about personalities, Britain’s place in the New World Order – and its attitudes to homosexuality. Burgess’s usefulness to the Soviets was largely symbolic, but the crux of the story is the events surrounding Burgess’s regrets, and heartfelt wish to come home. Troy interviews him in a Vienna hotel.

“’I want to come home.’
‘Yes,’ said Troy softly. ‘I’d guessed as much.’
‘I miss it all. I miss London. I miss the clubs. I miss the Dog and Duck. I miss the Salisbury. I miss the reform. I miss the RAC. I miss the Gargoyle. I miss that bloke in the pub in Holborn who can fart the national anthem. I miss Tommy Trinder. I miss Max Miller. I miss Billy Cotton. I miss Mantovani. I miss my mother. Oh God, I miss my mother.’”

Troy becomes caught up with what is later revealed to be a plot within a plot – within a subterfuge – within a brutal exercise in double dealing. One thing is for certain, though – the British establishment has no intention of a ‘kiss and make up’ process with Burgess. Rod Troy is summoned to 10 Downing Street to meet Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who conceals his razor sharp political awareness by pottering about the kitchen in a tatty cardigan, making tea:

“But then, the old man could be amazingly elliptical, subtle to the point of obscurity, to the point where half the nation had willingly misunderstood his ‘never had it so good’ speech. However, there was nothing elliptical about ‘I don’t want Burgess back – at any price.’”


One of the joys of the Fred Troy novels is the vast repertory company of characters, some fictional and others actual, who appear throughout the series. One such is the beguiling Hungarian musician Méret Voytek, who took centre stage in A Lily of the Field (click the link to read more). Voytek, now a Soviet agent, and Troy are temporarily reunited as part of the subterfuge surrounding Burgess’s attempts to return to Britain.

“He’d not set eyes on Voytek since the day he’d stuck her on the ferry to Calais ten years ago. At twenty-four she’d looked older than her years, her hair prematurely, brazenly white after a year in the hands of the Nazis. Now, she had more flesh on her bones, she had dyed her hair back to its youthful black, no longer wearing white as the badge of her suffering.”

Lawton was born in 1949, so would have only the vaguest memories of growing up in an austere and fragile post-war Britain, but he is a master of describing the contradictions and social stresses of the middle years of the century. Here, he describes Westcott, a notoriously persistent MI5 interrogator, sent to quiz Troy on the events in Vienna:

“His generation had not worn well. A childhood in the over-romanticised Edwardian Age, an adolescence spent wondering if the Great War would last long enough to kill him, and then thrust out into the twenties, into the General Strike and the Depression – the Age of Disappointment – and the thirties, what Auden had called ‘that dirty, double-dealing decade’ – one not designed to leave a man with any memories of heroism, cameradie, or death”

Fred Troy is something of an anti-hero. His attitude towards women would have him outed in the comments section of today’s Guardian, and his approach to moral certainties would, at best, be described as pragmatic. Over the course of the series, he beds many women, but Friends and Traitors has him attached (but not exclusively) to a wholesome lass from Derbyshire, called Shirley Foxx. They go to her home town, to rediscover and reclaim the house where she grew up. In the use of evocative product names, Lawton has found a sharp weapon, and he is not afraid to use it:

“He found her in the bedroom. Childhood spread out across a handknotted rag rug – one large doll, one small lacking its left arm, half a dozen Ladybird books, a dozen Collins classics, a shrivelled bouquet of posies in a faded red ribbon, a bar of soap in the shape of Minnie Mouse …”

While Shirley is trying to exorcise her childhood in order to make sense of her new life, Troy beds another woman but is then called to investigate her murder. Having sorted out her parents’ house, Shirley makes a surprise return to Troy’s London flat in St Martin’s Lane:

“’But it’s done now. The loo works, hot and cold running in a new sink, the house is let and Rosie and Malcolm installed. I am …..home!’ Of course she was. He didn’t think he’d noticed his home in days. He had fallen through a hole in time and space. He had lived with the dead, and could not handle the living woman in front of him.”

To put it simply, Lawton is a writer who transcends genre. His prose is subtle, stylish, pared back to the bone, but translucent, crystal clear. His portrayal of Britain and its place either side of WWII is masterly: he reflects the country’s disappointments, its uncertainties and how it seems to be stumbling, torchless, through a world of darkness quite beyond its comprehension. The Fred Troy novels lack the sequential timeline of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time cycle, but in every other sense they are its equal.

Guy Burgess – hip before hipsters, Rolling before the Stones, acid-head before LSD. The decay and dissolution that gathered around him was the end of a class, of a way of life; something that would be written about with wonder but always tinged with sadness. The novel begins in 1935, just before the Second World War when Burgess attends a dinner at the Troy home and is introduced to Freddie. They become unlikely friends and acquaintances. They meet again in 1940 during the war. Burgess believes that war was made for procreation (can’t use the words the author does) and finds the blackouts erotic. He propositions boys two or three times a week and hosts endless orgies at his flat. How does someone like this secure a post in the Foreign Office in Washington after the war? After his defection, his life is still linked to the Inspector by tenuous threads linking the two men together.
I found this book extremely difficult to read as I found it quite disjointed, jumping around from scene to scene, time period to time period without many linkages. I also found it quite vulgar at times and I am no prude! How does a Scotland Yard Inspector get involved with escorting Burgess back to London? I am afraid that this is one book that I really did not enjoy. It is not at all how I perceive the people in the diplomatic service to behave and I found the war to be trivialised.
Saphira
Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

This was a hard pass for me - I"m not sure if it was stepping in to the series too late or what, but I was un-engaged and frustrated/bored for most of this novel. It was a real slog.

Infamous Cambridge spy Guy Burgess had a cameo earlier this year in Joseph Kanon's Cold War novel Defectors, but he practically steals the show in John Lawton's excellent new Inspector Troy tale, Friends and Traitors (Grove/Atlantic, digital galley). It's the eighth book in the crime series where history regularly meets mystery as Scotland Yard's Frederick Troy dodges bombs in World War II London (Black Out), or protects Khruschev on a 1956 UK visit (Old Flames), or is tangled in the political scandals of the  early '60s (A Little White Death).

In this entry, Lawton plays the long game, beginning with police cadet Troy first meeting Burgess at a family dinner in 1935. Both his Russian emigre/press baron father and his older brother warn him that the charming Burgess is bad news, "queer as a coot,'' a notorious gossip, a possible spy. Still, Troy is intrigued by Burgess, who keeps showing up at various venues and times before, during and after the war. Then in 1951, Burgess and Donald MacLean defect to the Soviet Union, and their betrayal, along with that of Kim Philby, upends the British intelligence community for years. And that's still the case in 1958 when a sad and pathetic Burgess approaches Troy during a family trip to Europe and says he wants to return to England. The ensuing imbroglio in Vienna results in the shooting of an MI5 agent, and Troy must defend himself against charges of murder and treason. All of this plays out in a string of atmospheric set pieces and charged exchanges of dialogue among the well-drawn cast of friends, family, lovers and spies.

The Troy books can be read out of order as stand-alone thrillers, but you run the risk of finding out the fate of characters and cases featured in other stories. Sudden death and reversals of fortune mark Troy's complicated professional and private life, but that just makes the series all the more rewarding.
from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever 11/17

This is the first time I have read an Inspector Troy book and perhaps I came into this a little late. As a point in history the book is really interesting but I found it slow in paces and lost the thread several times. It seemed to spend a lot of time on Guy Burgess and I wondered what the point of this was. I have read a number of spy novels and they flow a lot better. Having said that perhaps if I had read previous books it might make sense.

I rarely use pictures of dresses without a person inside, but this particular dress was so very much the right one … It is a 1955 Balenciaga evening dress, and is currently on show at the V&A museum in London. It is stunningly beautiful, and a masterpiece of design and construction.

John Lawton says his books can be read in any order. Len Deighton says the same about his Berlin triple trilogy, and I argued politely about that here. And now I would take issue with Lawton too – what are these authors thinking? I have read a lot of books by John Lawton, most of them dealing with the scandals, crimes and spy dramas of British life in the 1950s and 1960s. I always enjoy them, but they jump about all over the place, and presuppose an awful lot of knowledge about real life, and about Lawton’s books, and about quite a lot of other books as well – for example there is a character who would seem to be a resurrection of Marjorie Allingham’s Majersfontein Lugg, though he is not named as such.

This one was nudging at the end of my patience for the remarkable life of Frederick Troy -  though I did enjoy the work colleagues who made a list of all the people who had died in close proximity to him, including many policemen, and remarked how very suspicious that was. Well, exactly.

The books are meant to take an unsentimental and unblinkered view of the shady world of spies and criminals, but the hero Troy is unfathomably rich, lives in great comfort both in a Central London flat and a country house, and is smoothly well-connected, with his family (including his brother the Home Secretary) knowing anyone of any power and importance in the land. He is also magnetically attractive to all women. All of them. They can’t wait to jump into bed with him. He is marginally less convincing and more fairytale than James Bond in this respect: I read all the James Bond books last year, so feel I am in a position to judge.

And Lawton has plainly been looking at James Bond, as in the extract above. In fact Vesper Lynd does not wear a red dress in Casino Royale, though she does wear a red pleated cotton skirt at one point. The key dress she does wear is black velvet, and it is used to silence and blindfold her in a peculiarly unpleasant image.




Still – the story was compelling and twisted and turned satisfyingly. Troy was shown to be a long-time acquaintance of the strange spy Guy Burgess. The early part of this book deals with early meetings between them between 1938 and the 1950s: then we jump to a connection between the two men later. There is the usual mistrust and uncertainty.

I think anyone who really enjoys spy stories will have time for this book… and probably the whole series.

The only Lawton book I have looked at on the blog was a non-fiction account of the Profumo Affair (that Mandy Rice-Davies hat!).

Earlier this year Joseph Kanon produced an excellent book called Defectors, again about the British spies who fled to Moscow in the 1950s – I used the same photo of Guy Burgess and Tom Driberg.


I have mentioned before that I am always on a watch for the word ‘credenza’ in books – usually a piece of office furniture in US crime novels of the 80s and 90s. In this book we have a Chippendale credenza! Stay classy, Lawton.

Loved it! This is my kind of story: A classic, fascinating story, intelligent and written with great depth. War time and 1950's London, Vienna, friction not only with the Russians but between departments - everything was pitch perfect. I loved the (speculative) look at Burgess, as I have not read much about him - and of course, no one will ever know his complete, true story now. Inspector Troy and his family are all quite interesting, if somewhat dysfunctional characters. And there are some great twists and turns in the plot. Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic/Atlantic Monthly Press for an ARC of this excellent work of historical fiction. I will most definitely be adding the other Inspector Troy novels to my list of books to read. 4.5 stars!

Hard one to review. This is not a murder mystery but a reimagining of the lives of the British spies Burgess and Mclean, both of whom are, let's face it, pond scum. I suspect the details of these cases are unknown to many readers and therefore this will all be new. If you are familiar with them, it's still a worthy read. We'll never know the full truth of what happened and how far the scandals and complicity went so Superintendant Troy and his encounter in Vienna in the 1950s is as plausible as any other way to explore this historical issue. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This is a slow read and dark. Try it if you are interested in Cold War intrigue.

Inspector Frederick Troy has never been one to follow advice, and when his family was warned to avoid Guy Burgess, Troy avoided the advice. Not that Troy was exactly fond of Burgess, thinking of him as more the bad penny always turning up than any sort of confidante. Though who would confide in anyone as indiscreet and reckless as Burgess was a puzzle.

Friends and Traitors presents Troy’s tepid friendship throughout the years from their meeting in 1935 to the day Burgess infamously defected to the Soviet Union with MacLean, one of the Eton spies whose betrayal encompassed a third man, a fourth, and possibly several more. You would think having defected and decamped to Russia, Burgess would finally stop impinging on Troy’s life, but no such luck.

Burgess misses England and wants to come home and the person he reaches to for help is Troy, embroiling him in a murder and bringing him under suspicion of being another in the cluster of traitors. Can Troy clear himself and find the real murderer?



Friends and Traitors is John Lawton’s eleventh novel and his eighth featuring Inspector Troy. As the series progresses, each book tosses away more and more of the conventions of genre fiction. If this book were a singleton – not part of a series – it would be classified as literary fiction examining the role of identity, family, patriotism, and honor in Cold War England. The fact of being a spy is central to Burgess’ identity and his role in the story, but the particulars of his espionage are immaterial. The murders come very late and are not the purpose of the story which is really about Troy figuring out more about himself and what he values.

Lawton has incorporated real historical figures in his books in the past, though never quite so completely as he has with Guy Burgess, the spy. He does it very well and Burgess’ charm and pitiable state come through along with his vulgarity, making it easy to understand how Troy could enjoy him and pity him while also slightly disliking him all at the same time.

I have loved this series since its inception. Troy is a complicated character, compromised by his affection for others, by love and loyalty that is personal rather than patriotic. He does not just sail close to the wind, he risks being blown off course. I enjoy this series and would love to see them in a Masterpiece Mystery series though it’s possible Troy with his empathy for friends and traitors like Guy Burgess is too complicated for television.

I received an advance e-galley of Friends and Traitors from Atlantic Grove through NetGalley

Friends and Traitors at Grove Atlantic
John Lawton author site

This has always been one of my favorite series. In the past Troy has been a fascinating character as has the family. But in this story I felt like I was caught up in a LeCarre story with the emphasis on tradecraft and not the story.

Friends and Traitors by John Lawton will have readers riffing through their mental Rolodex of the infamous Cambridge Five. Who were they? When were they outed? Which of them ended up in Russia? In 1958, Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard is in Vienna with his extended family for part of his older brother Rod’s belated 50th birthday Grand Tour of Europe. Who should reach out to him but his old acquaintance Guy Burgess, wishing to be brought home out of the cold?

Troy’s memories of his first meeting with Guy Burgess coincide with his first days as a copper; it’s somewhat reminiscent of Lynda La Plante's Good Friday, another book revisiting the early professional days of a would-be Scotland Yard detective. Troy throws the cat among the pigeons when he’s introduced to Burgess at a family dinner party in Hertfordshire, July 1935.

“Rod tells me you were in Russia a while ago,” Troy said, hoping for and getting the desired effect.

No other word would have exploded into the room, slicing through all other dinner chit-chat, quite like “Russia.” Facing him were his uncle Nikolai and Baroness Budberg. Within earshot, his father, and just out of it, his mother. All of them Russian exiles.

All of them Russian exiles, and all of them intensely loyal to England, their adopted homeland. Unlike Guy Burgess. Troy’s wont when in the country is to listen to the late-night sounds of the countryside—the foxes and owls—but he’s saddled with Burgess, “the kind of bloke who’d never leave a party until physically thrown out.” Small silver lining, Burgess promises to introduce Troy to a London tailor who can give his “beat bobby” uniform a certain je ne sais quoi.

“No,” said Troy. “Of course I don’t want to be a beat bobby. I want to be a detective at Scotland Yard. I don’t mind being in uniform, but I’d be a damn sight happier if I had one that fitted. I tried it on just before you got here. I look like a weasel lost in a sack of spuds.”

“I used to get my Dartmouth cadet togs tailored at Gieves in Old Bond Street. They make uniforms for all our armed forces. Tell you what … if you’re doing nothing Monday morning, meet me there and I’ll introduce you to the old boys…”

This interchange sums up the tension between how Burgess acted (publicly) and who he was (privately)—because for all intents and purposes, he was “one of us” in English society, someone who went to the same schools, frequented the same tailors, went to the same dinner parties, and worked at the same papers.

After the tailor appointment, Troy goes out drinking with Burgess; he’d “been told that a chap doesn’t let a chap drink alone, so he’d drunk what Burgess drank, and to his detriment.” Unfortunately, his father and older brother Rod are waiting for him when he gets home “tiddly” at four in the afternoon. Rod is furious that his younger brother was seen “courting the company of one of the most notorious buggers in London.” Troy is getting a rude education in the ways of sophisticated Londoners—his brother isn’t just being “coarse”; no, Burgess is “as queer as a coot,” something the brothers’ newspaperman tycoon father knew when he hired Burgess as a writer.

“Hear me out, my boy. Burgess is a homosexual. I knew that when I hired him. It doesn’t matter. He is also a Soviet agent and that does matter.”

Rod and Troy looked at each other. Silent and wide-eyed. “And I did not know that when I hired him.”

Their father says he isn’t going to sack him even though he knows he’s a mole: “He’s rather good at what he does. I see no reason to sack him.” But because of their Russian background, he implores them to be careful. Here’s the kicker: Rod asks, “Then one question remains. Who do we tell?”

“I say again. Who do we tell?”

“Tell? We tell no one.”

Friends and Traitors has Troy and Burgess meeting sporadically—casually (or so Troy thinks) over the decades—until there’s a climactic denouement that unravels the “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude of those in the British know over the years: someone is murdered to keep secret who knew about Burgess’s past. A page-turner that’s steeped in recent history, John Lawton’s eighth Inspector Troy is a real tour de force.

Inspector Troy #8 has Frederick Troy reviewing his long career in the reflection of his relationship with Guy Burgess. Although fictional, the book feels historical, and paints a grim picture of post-war England and its ambivalence with regard to ex-ally Russia.

After a seven-year hiatus, Frederick Troy, head of the Met’s Murder Squad, is finally back in a new tale. In prior series books, John Lawton has given us Troy in action during the Blitz, other times during World War II and during the Cold War. In Friends and Traitors, the present day is the waning days of the 1950s, austerity Britain, but with plenty of flashbacks to earlier days.

If you’re an espionage reader, you’re well aware of the Cambridge Spies. Remember the wildly self-indulgent and indiscreet Guy Burgess, who defected to the USSR with Donald Maclean in 1951? Of course you do. Now imagine that while he was passing on British intelligence secrets to his Soviet masters he was a social acquaintance of Frederick Troy.

One of the delights of a John Lawton thriller is his deft mixture of real people with his fictional characters. In Frederick Troy’s world, the intensely class conscious England, it’s not at all surprising that Troy would know Burgess. After all, even if Troy is a copper, he also comes from wealth and position, and he hobnobs with politicos and high society, including when they’re slumming it. And Guy could turn any gathering into a sordid exhibition of drunkenness and sexual outrageousness.

Troy thought nothing about Burgess could surprise him; he sure wasn’t surprised by Guy turning out to be a Soviet spy. But Guy reaching out to Troy long after defecting, and asking for an unimaginable favor is a most unwelcome surprise. And it’s a surprise that leads to more revelations, danger and heartache.

With atmosphere and intrigue to burn, this book a tough one to put down. While the Frederick Troy books can be read in any order, I would recommend that at the very least you read the first book in the series, Black Out, and the most recent, A Lily of the Field.

A most interesting historical tour de force of England over the mid 20th Century as seen through the eyes of the youngest son Troy of a Russian emerge extended family well entrenched in English society. In his upbringing he meets all manner of people who are quests at the family dinner table. He meets Guy Burgess who is a blatant homosexual with a catholic taste in all types of fellow devotees as well as circle of women that he charms. Troy decides to join the Met police with the aim of being a murder detective. A glimpse is given of some prominent incidents that mark his rapid rise in his career until the story dwells on his involvement with the attempted bid of Burgess to return to England after spending many years in Moscow following his sensational defection to Russia with his friend Maclean. A tale of deceit assassination murder and betrayal ensues with an unforeseen dramatic conclusion. Troy a most complex and interesting character is left seemingly settled in his life and career. However for his new readers they will want to learn more of his beginnings from the books that have gone before.

Friends and Traitors by John Lawton- A Frederick Troy espionage novel, about spies during World War Two and later. Troy is just starting out at Scotland Yard at the beginning, and hoping to become a detective on his own merits. He hails from a wealthy Russian family, who escaped to Britain after the first World War, and became English aristocrats. He keeps running into a gadfly named Guy Burgess, who always seems to know the best people and the latest news. Years later, Troy, a Chief Inspector now, runs into Burgess again, a known spy for the Russians, who wants to come home to England. But it's not that simple, and chaos follows.
Lawton's books are very well crafted and I enjoyed this one, especially the Blackout sequences during WWII. I think this is book number eight in the series but I'm not sure it matters that much where you begin as this stood up well as a standalone book. Not quite Le Carre, but then who is. A good intriguing spy novel.

Another strong outing for Frederick Troy, slightly different style but just as intriguing.

This book has all the thriller elements with a twist on reality. An intriguing and fun read.
Having never read any of the previous Inspector Troy books I wasn't sure what to expect from this book however from the start we are introduced to Guy Burgess at a dinner of Troy's father. From the little inform I knew of Burgess I was excited to see how the story stood out amongst the other novels containing him. The book takes you from pre world war two through to the cold war with Troys path always crossing Burgess's. You begin with the feeling of Troy being lily white but as the story progresses you see the many personas he holds. Troy doesn't allow others to make up his mind about someone. several warned him off Burgess but for all of Guys flaws his dynamic personality makes Troy endear to him. The books covers several mysteries from Guys defection to the murder of a socialite with many twists and turns along the way.
Overall I really enjoyed this book, the pace and twists kept me interested whilst seeing the character development of Troy was fun to read. There are mentions of previous cases Troy has face (I assume as part of the series) but the description leaves the reader informed without the feeling of having to read previous books. This is a very good stand alone novel and I will be looking into purchasing more of the Troy books to read. If you enjoy spy novels then do give this one a go!

Thanks to netgalley, the publishers and John Lawton for the opportunity to read an ARC for my honest review

I was provided this book by NetGalley and in return am writing this review.

I have not read any of the previous Detective Troy novels but that was not a problem in following this story. Previous police cases were referred to however there was enough information provided to understand the references.

The story ranges through Frederick Troy’s past, including his introduction and subsequent encounters with Guy Burgess and his current day (1950’s) dealings with “Burgess, Maclean” affair.

Lots of interesting plot twists and turns make it difficult to anticipate the final outcome. True events and fictional scenarios make for an intriguing novel.

The final scenes involving the denouement Kearney was just a step too far in my opinion.

I would like to thank NetGalley for providing this book in exchange for a review.
As a young policeman, Frederick Troy first met Guy Burgess at a dinner given by Troy's father. Warned that Burgess was a suspected spy and that he should keep his distance, he still encounters him in a number of social situations and they become casual friends. It comes as no surprise to Troy when Burgess eventually defects to Russia. Now on a vacation to celebrate his brother's birthday, he is once again approached by Burgess, asking Troy to arrange his return to England.

Fans of Lawton's Troy novels will welcome the return of Meret Voytek, a Russian spy who appeared in A Lily in the Field. There is enough background offered to introduce her to new readers and her appearance is smoothly woven into Burgess' story.

Murders, the hunt for Russian spies and a look at life in 1950s England provide a fascinating read. This will also appeal to readers of John le Carre.