Paris Spring/James Naughtie

Jim Naughtie is a versatile man. He has been a leading radio broadcaster for many years presenting the flagship Today programme, written a work on opera and hosted the BBC book club. At such an event I met him and  found him to be affable and engaging.

As a keen reader of the espionage genre I read with interest his spy novel set in Paris in 1968. In brief the story centred around the ageing spymaster Freddy Craven based in the British  embassy in Paris and his protege Will Flemyng whose brother Abel, also a spy, may have been compromised based on information provided by East German agent Kristof. The Press play a big role in the development of the novel. It was a age when there were fewer gizmos and written in the style of another journalist turned writer Gerald Seymour. Henry Porter, another successful  journalist well known to the Rust, wrote Brandenburg a spy novel based in Berlin in 1989. Naughtie also evokes well the Paris of 1968: the student riots, the cemetery Pere Lachaise where a murder is committed, its bistros and ambience. As a proud Caledonian he cannot resist switching the story to the Highlands where the third brother Mungo, not a spy, lives. It’s a page turner though the end is not wholly satisfactory.

The deceptions – or are they?- are not always easy to follow and it beggars belief that Will would work so closely with a journalist Maria to unravel the murder. Naughtie does his home work and has produced a well researched and absorbing espionage novel.