David Wolstencroft was very successful with his first book Good News, Bad News. It was pretty well reviewed, and then had the book chosen to be a Richard & Judy bookclub choice, which is never exactly bad for sales.
As a co-creator of Spooks (you can’t miss this fact as it’s all over the cover, and there’s a special offer for the DVDs inside the back), he’s already set lots of action in MI5, so this time he chooses MI6.
Four “lilywhites” are involved in operations that go spectacularly wrong, and with their own government offering them no support, they’re forced to seek out the mystical Contact Zero – an organisation or person who can make spies disappear forever. They’re forced to go on something of a “quest” that leads them half way around the world, while various other powers are on their trail.
This is good old-fashioned populist stuff, with plenty of action to keep the reader turning the pages, but nothing too deep. Comparison’s with Le Carré are seriously misplaced (incidentally, aren’t we due a new Le Carré by now?).
However, it’s pretty obvious that Wolstencroft’s publishers must have had a conversation with the man that when something like this:
“The first book did really great David, but have you seen who’s still top of the bestsellers? Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code. If you can find a way to get a bit of that kind of thing into the book, then you’d really have a blockbuster on your hands. You know, historical secret societies, a plot from A to B to C. You’ll sell millions.”
And so, while it is a pageturner, the comparisons are not to be made lightly. Where Brown insisted (and readers believed) that everything therein was true, Wolstencroft begins by telling readers, seemingly with a straight face, that the D-Notice Committee can censor books, and this is out of the author’s control. Thereafter, at points throughout the book, odd words, phrases and names are “blacked out”. It’s an unnecessary trick.
Worth a read? Maybe. But I’d wait for the paperback if I were you.