Good News, Bad News

David Wolstencroft has been busy about the place plugging his new novel, Good News, Bad News. I heard him with Mark Lawson on Radio 4’s Front Row, and he was also with Simon Mayo on Five Live (I missed this, and hoped to catch on the BBC’s Listen Again feature, but they don’t do Simon Mayo’s show beyond the previous episode – I was trying at the weekend. As it happens, the Beeb are updating their player today and tomorrow, adding loads of additional programming to the player. I look forward to experimenting with it after 5.00pm tomorrow).
Wolstencroft was one of the writers and creators of Spooks, so it doesn’t take an enormous leap of faith for me to give his book a try, especially as it’s based around spies.
The setup of the novel is that there are two characters that are both working undercover in the same tiny photo booth in Oxford Circus station. Neither of them initially realises that the other is also a spy. The opening of the novel sees the two characters toss to decide who makes a phone call from a booth. One wins, and one loses – he makes the call. The phone box is hit by an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade – if you didn’t know, you haven’t been watching enough Ultimate Force).
The action then jumps to two days earlier and I was suddenly wary that the novel was going to be enormously limited. Fear not – it isn’t. I was pleasantly surprised by what then occurred, which I won’t spoil here.
The novel is grittier than Spooks with fewer young handsome agents and designer clothes. It’s a bit more Le Carre than Spooks, but not completely so since the action moves around a pace, and I feel sure that if you stopped and thinked about it too hard, you’d spot a few flaws. But I can’t complain and it’s entertaining fare.


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