Great story: well plotted and gripping
Liked it . Due to health issues cannot will write a proper review at a later time
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mineA more extensive review will follow

Plagued by the insomnia that has troubled Gabrielle Dax throughout his life, Dax isn't sure if the events unfolding are the result of reality or a mild dose of paranoia. Things aren't always what they seem in his life and in this book. Just when the reader begins to see what will happen next the plot takes another turn. Is the elusive mouse a reflection of his life?, Is his brother Sefton as bland as he appears? Is Faith Green being honest or manipulative? These are some of the questions that keep the readers ' interest throughout Gabriel's Moon. Boyd's skill as a writer are evident in this highly entertaining and immersive read.

Gabriel is a travel writer who is enlisted in the service of a branch of M16. While completing his assignments, he is trying to understand a fire that burned down his home and killed his mother. He was 6 and has terrible nightmares. Boyd is a wonderful writer who expertly weaves together the threads of this novel.

Rather than the non-stop action of many spy thrillers, William Boyd gives you Gabriel Dax, an unassuming travel writer who becomes a pawn in the game of espionage. Encountering an old school friend in the People’s Republic of the Congo, he is given an opportunity to tape an interview with Patrice Lumumba, the new president. He is not a political reporter, but this is an opportunity that he can not pass up. On the plane ride home he first spies Faith Green, a person who will shake up his rather ordinary life. Gabriel sometimes did favors for his brother, a government worker, delivering notes or packages as he travelled. Green is with MI6 and now wants him to work for her, doing similar favors. Gabriel has trouble resisting Green and becomes her spy. This is the height of the Cold War. At times Gabriel is unsure of who he can trust. He falls prey to an attempted set up by the CIA to obtain the Lumumba tapes, helps a double agent evade capture and discovers that betrayal may be closer to home than he thought.

Gabriel suffers from insomnia. At the age of six he lost his widowed mother in a house fire that he barely escaped. The fire was blamed on a candle burning in his room. Now he dreams of fire. With the help of his therapist he is looking into the fire to come to terms with his mother’s death, raising doubts about the actual cause. He has written several successful travel books and enjoys his travels, but when he is home he prefers a quiet evening, a glass of whiskey and an occasional evening with his girlfriend. He is not James Bond or Jason Bourne, but he is resourceful. He does not have car chases or shoot outs, but Boyd’s writing will hook you from the first page. This is for fans of John Le Carre and historical fiction at its’ best. I would like to thank NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing this book.

Boyd's strength in this novel, reminiscent of Restless, is his ability to convey the time and place so well. A wealth of detail sets this historical novel firmly in the setting of England as a fading colonial power in the 1960s, trying and failing to maintain its strength during the cold war. The backstory of Gabriel Dax, the main character, is a mystery in itself, one that he is seeking to solve in between his journeys as a peripatetic travel writer, someone who is gradually pulled into the world of MI6 despite his misgivings. While I remember liking Restless a little better, this is a strong start to what is purported to be a series featuring Gabriel and the enigmatic characters who surround him, including his handler, Faith Green.

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite story frameworks was the innocent person who gets caught in a dangerous web of intrigue. The classic example of that plot is “North by Northwest,” one of Hitch’s best films. If Hitchcock were alive today, or if author William Boyd had written his newest novel, “Gabriel’s Moon,” in the early 1960s, when the events described took place, the celebrated director could have had a field day adopting Boyd’s work for the big screen. But Hitch would have hired a good script doctor to punch up the story a bit. As it is, readers will have a modest degree of fun following a travel writer who gradually gets involved in Cold War espionage of the highest degree.

The title character of “Gabriel’s Moon” is Gabriel Dax, a 30-ish Londoner who makes a barely adequate living by writing travel books with titles like “Rivers of the World.” He supplements his income by sometimes dropping off letters or packages in various cities on his travels as a “favor” to his brother Sefton, who ostensibly works in the foreign office. As part of his research for his latest book, Gabriel secured an interview in August 1960 with Patrice Lumumba, newly elected Prime Minister of the newly formed Republic of the Congo.

That date is significant, as those familiar with the history of that part of the world know. A month later, Lumumba was deposed in a coup and executed a few months afterward. During the interview, Lumumba had warned Gabriel that the United States, Great Britain, and Belgium (which had ruled the former Belgian Congo as a colony) wanted the Prime Minister dead. Lumumba also gave Gabriel the names of three foreign agents operating in the Congo involved in plotting against him. At the time, Gabriel dismissed Lumumba’s statement as idle paranoid chatter, but, after the coup, he realized his tape had value. That realization was reinforced when various mysterious people started contacting him. (Recent historical research suggests that Lumumba’s fears about Western governments were factual.)

The Lumumba tape is a classic McGuffin, and William Boyd could have turned the real identities of the three agents and Gabriel’s dilemma about what to do with the tape into the basis for an entire novel. However, the author drops the Lumumba storyline almost entirely after the first few chapters. Instead, the book describes Gabriel’s gradual recruitment by Faith Green, a woman who “happened” to be on the plane with Gabriel back to London from the Congo. She supposedly works for an international magazine, but it’s no spoiler to reveal she’s a British intelligence agent. She’s also aware of Gabriel’s favors for his brother and prevails upon him to do a similar favor for her on his next trip abroad. And so, Gabriel’s descent (or ascent, depending on how you look at it) to becoming a full-fledged espionage agent begins.

Much of “Gabriel’s Moon” reads like a primer on mid-20th-century espionage. However, Gabriel’s missions are of the John le Carre/Len Deighton variety, not James Bond adventures. The book has secret pickups and drops, double agents, mole hunts, and surreptitious photography of sensitive locations. There’s even a fairly tense situation in which Gabriel helps a fellow agent out of a ticklish situation. Gabriel’s life and limb aren’t at stake, except for one brief encounter late in the book, but national security might be. William Boyd also has an advantage that ’60s writers like Le Carre didn’t have: a half-century of historical hindsight that allows him to craft more accurate scenarios.

The book covers just over two years from the Lumumba interview through the Cuban Missile Crisis, with a brief epilogue set a year later. Readers get a sense of Gabriel’s gradual development of a moral compass, although he isn’t the most interesting protagonist of similar fiction I’ve read. The most interesting sections of the book concern Gabriel’s periodic visits with a therapist. For decades, he had been blaming himself for his mother’s death in a fire when he was a child. The therapist helped him work through those guilt feelings, and the book contains “transcripts” of those sessions. Although these interludes have little to do with the main storyline, they were fascinating to me.

I used the word “storyline” somewhat loosely in the last paragraph. Gabriel goes on several missions during the book, but each occurs in a few days in a book that spans two years. Further, his role is often secondary, a cog in the overall scheme. The result is a lack of urgency and, for the most part, suspense. It s like watching a documentary on period spycraft: interesting in spots but not riveting. Nor is Gabriel an interesting enough character to demand readers’ attention to discover what he’ll do next. Instead, most of “Gabriel’s Moon” is leisurely paced and a bit of a slog, even though it’s well under 300 pages.

I enjoyed “Gabriel’s Moon” enough to give it a four-star rating. However, those less familiar with or interested in period history may find it more difficult to read. Gabriel’s espionage adventures are interesting from an academic, as opposed to a suspense standpoint. The author does a great job of creating an atmosphere for the various European locales Gabriel visits during the book. Most of these are off the beaten tourist path, and the author makes them come alive. I suspect that “Gabriel’s Moon” reads like one of Gabriel’s travel books, which is more interesting in its background and detail than the plot.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.

William Boyd is master of both literary form and the spy/thriller genre. This book is a well-written combination of high stakes narrative and character development.

I have really enjoyed a lot of William Boyd's previous novels, this story of an accidental spy was very well written, and full of mystery and suspense, but probably wasn't really my vibe... it was however interesting, set in 1960s London, the setting is very atmospheric and draws you in.

Boyd never fails to delight. This spy novel with dashes or erotic literature and haunting memory themes is interesting and so far above most spy novels. Boyd is a literary author but his books move and have a story-as does this one-which seems to be the first in perhaps a series. Interesting. Read it.

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on December 3, 2024

Gabriel’s Moon is the sort of book that Hitchcock would have filmed. It has a plot he favored — an innocent man is caught up in a cloak-and-dagger world, manipulated by people he thought he could trust until they try to kill him, forcing him to use his wits to survive.

The story takes place during the Cold War. It builds on evidence that President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to assassinate the Congo’s new Prime Minister because of his paranoid belief that Patrice Lumumba was too cozy with communists. The CIA has never been a friend of democracy.

Gabriel Dax is a London-based travel writer. He’s also something of a part-time spy. His brother Sefton works for the Foreign Office and, although they are not close (“both of them recognized their essential incompatibility”), Sefton occasionally asks Gabriel for a favor — hand delivering a small package to someone in Copenhagen, for example. Gabriel’s work, including a position with a leftwing magazine, gives him an excuse to travel, and he doesn’t mind earning extra money by performing clandestine tasks that seem reasonably safe.

Gabriel is working on a book about rivers, juxtaposing familiar waters like the Mississippi and unfamiliar (to the British anyway) locales like Hattiesburg. Rivers are a familiar metaphor for the flow of a life, and Gabriel recognizes that his own runs “underground, more like a sewer than a river.”

A writing assignment for the magazine takes him to Léopoldville, in the newly independent republic of the Congo, where an old friend from university is now the Minister of Health. He records an interview with Lumumba, who rambles a bit about Eisenhower’s plot to assassinate him, spearheaded by three names Gabriel doesn’t recognize. After Lumumba is murdered, the tape recordings prove to be more dangerous for Gabriel than any clandestine work he does for his brother.

Flying back from the Congo, Gabriel notices an attractive woman reading one of his travel books. After he encounters the woman again, he learns that their meetings are not a coincidence, that she — Faith Green — is also a spy. Soon he finds himself doing favors for her. Faith sends him to Spain to purchase drawings from an artist and deliver them to someone else. The "someone else" turns out to be Kit Caldwell, the CIA station chief in Madrid. The tasks pay well and Gabriel gets a buzz from working undercover.

As the story progresses, it becomes unclear whether Caldwell is a good guy or a bad guy, but Gabriel helps him when he seems to be in a pickle, perhaps because he senses that labels don’t matter in the shadowy world of espionage. Caldwell seems to be a decent person regardless of his ideology. The truth about Caldwell comes as something of a surprise, but there are bigger surprises to come. That’s one of the joys of spy novels; characters are so often not what they seem.

The story opens with a fire that burned down Gabriel’s childhood home. Gabriel has always lived with the belief that a candle in a moon-shaped nightlight in his room caused the fire. He has untrustworthy memories of seeing his mother on the kitchen floor and knowing that she was dead before he was rescued. His adult sessions with a therapist to treat his insomnia give the reader insight into his personality. Gabriel recovers important memories after following his therapist’s advice to learn more about the events surrounding his mother’s death, developing a critical story within the larger plot.

Gabriel’s personality evolves during his relationship with Faith, about whom he becomes a bit obsessive. Gabriel gains self-confidence as he overcomes obstacles, including near-death experiences, but is he sufficiently confident to deal honestly with his attraction to Faith? The question becomes moot when he discovers her true nature — and his own.

Ultimately, Gabriel’s Moon is about the birth and maturation of a spy. By the end, Gabriel would like to return to his life as a writer, but like joining the mob, once you enter the world of espionage, there’s no way to leave. Perhaps that means that Gabriel Dax will turn up again. As a spy novel fan, I can only hope that’s true, as William Boyd knows how to mix suspense, intrigue, and amgibuity, the key ingredients of a good spy thriller.

RECOMMENDED

Thank you to the author, Atlantic Monthly Press and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This densely plotted spy novel is a tried and true William Boyd story. Credible and complicated plot, but so well-written that you never lose track of the different threads, and great pacing that draws you in in spite of yourself. The protagonist is trying to solve two parallel mysteries: one in his professional life, i.e. who is using him as a "useful idiot" and why, and one in his personal life, i.e. the fire that orphaned him when he was a child. The portrayal of the times and places was well done. Some may find the plot unsatisfying, since the ending does not tie everything up in a nice bow, but I found the characters so enjoyable that it overrode any compulsion I may have felt for a tidy ending.

This book was a page-turner, and I will totally read any sequels. Gabriel Dax makes a great spy, from a spymaster's perspective, because he lives a very confused life. Events just happen to him, and he is very clearly along for the ride. He's highly directable, by the right person, even totally against what he knows are his best interests. Gabriel is, on multiple levels, an enigma to himself—not only does he have a mysterious childhood trauma, but throughout this book you will be wondering why he's doing the things he does, and find Gabriel is there wondering right along with you! While not at all an unreliable narrator (in fact he's bewilderingly reliable, describing his own sometimes bizarre and often obsessive actions in great detail and with as much insight as it's possible for him to have), he's totally opaque to himself, though it's clear finds powerful women impossible to quit in personal, professional, and psychiatric settings, and predisposed to making truly awful decisions when it comes to his own well being. He's a spy controller's absolute dream.

Set in the grey drizzle of early 60’s London, this spy novel (apparently the first in a series) perfectly picks up the drear of Cold War undercover operations.

Gabriel Dax is a travel writer and from the couple of samples we see, his overripe prose, the “full plum-pudding,” contrasts starkly with Boyd’s clipped narrative style. While on a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he interviews the shortly to be assassinated Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, and the tapes of this interview are pivotal to the plot.

Gabriel has run a few errands for his brother Sefton, who works for the Foreign Office , and Sefton has recommended him to an associate, Faith Green, from the mysterious Institute of Developmental Studies . She asks Gabriel to run an apparently simple errand in Spain: Collect a painting from an artist and deliver it to the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service in Madrid. This sets off a series of entanglements and complications, including a bleak but eye-opening trip behind the iron curtain to ostensibly review a new-model housing development in Warsaw.

Much of the pleasure of this novel comes from the descriptions of post-war and pre-Swinging Sixties London. Gabriel lives in a mouse-infested apartment in Chelsea and his girlfriend Lorraine is a Waitress at a Wimpy Bar. Faith Green brings glamour and elegance to his existence and, despite his frequent assertions of agency and independence, she manipulates him into, well, we’re not initially sure what he’s being led into. Gabriel himself is frustrated and confused by the ever-peeling layers of deception and subterfuge.

I was never really rooting for Gabriel: he’s entitled and unsympathetic, a white middle-class man when that was pretty much the best thing to be, but I enjoyed the throwback setting and evocation of espionage novels from that era.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

It took me a while into the novel to see that I was intrigued - to buoy up the characterisation of the protagonist, Gabriel ‘s job as a travel writer of some renown, we have to sit through a bit of baggage about it - so it becomes , often, character description. Further, the underlying theme of his early ‘trauma’ having escaped a fire in which his mom died when he was 6, doesn’t really seem to play into the character’s personality; i guess he drinks a lot and reportedly cannot sleep.

It is implausible that one or two of the big crimes he perpetrates are not used to make him accountable. A spy against his will, eh? I did not believe in the chemistry of his relationships because we are listening to his internal and rational discussions, as he weighs up his amorous doings. He essentially stalks a woman, and then also perpetrates a major criminal action but there are no repercussions in his cut-off personality or in the real world. He has unaccountable encounters with lay people outside the spy world, but we see no reason - perhaps concocted to get him to make some decisions about his moves (but I sense they were constructed after the author decided it might be a good idea he change location, for example, in one instance in Warsaw). In any case, I was anyway engaged - even though things were unlikely … good fun! Of course Boyd is good at portraying these kinds of slightly comic , unlikely men are his specialty. Good read!

A subtle, very twisty tale of a man caught up in something far deeper and darker than he could have ever imagined. Gabe has made a good life traveling writing but an unexpected interview with Patrice Lumumba turns out to change his life. He's done a few small things for his brother Sefton who claims to work for the Foreign Office but now Faith who works for MI6 wants him to buy a painting in Spain. Things spiral, as they do, until Gabe finds himself on the spot. There's also a subplot involving his quest to solve his insomnia, which his therapist believes relates to the night when he was 6 and his house burned to the ground, killing his mother and leaving his orphaned. And there's a mouse in his flat. Boyd drops a few hints along the way but no spoilers from me as to where and how this will go. It's a fascinating portrait of a man, an era, and espionage. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This is a real page turner and an excellent read.

The cover caught my eye and the blurb promised me a good somewhat old-fashioned spy story. What I got is a story that should be titled The Useful Idiot. Gabriel, the male protagonist is indeed the useful idiot. He says so himself. Itś not that he`s not clever, it`s just that the people around him want him to be this idiot and treat him like one. Gabriel turns out to be not only naive but also careless and very laid back, which, in the espionage business, is not welcomed at all, making this whole story unbelievable.
What works well in this novel is the pace. Something is happening every few pages.
Poland in the sixties is portrayed without any errors. The author was careful with the names and places, spelled correctly. The only tiny thing I have spotted is that Gabriel somewhere around Szczecin/easter Germany makes a stop in his journey and drinks cola. I'm pretty sure there was no cola on the regular market. It was available only in a shop called Pewex. Just a little detail. That shop was a luxurious place and not everyone had access to it. In other words, you couldn't buy a cola at a petrol station in the 60s. either in Poland or in eastern Germany.
Overall it's a quick read. Not very memorable, but it made me interested in the history of Congo.

Gabriel’s Moon tells the story of Gabriel Dax, a travel writer with a tragic history and flaws. He is recruited to do a small errand for MI6, all the while trying to figure out and remember the night he became an orphan. I don’t typically read stories set in the 1960s with elements of real life events, much less spy novels, but this had an interesting premise that brings readers across the world, including Africa and Europe.

William Boyd starts off the story strong within the first few pages, sending readers straight into the fire of the book. However, the more I read, the more underwhelmed I became. Perhaps this wasn’t the right time for me to read Gabriel’s Moon, but I hope to pick this up again when I’m in the mood.

If you’re craving a slow burn novel about espionage and a main character who is arguably unlikeable, this is for you.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Delighted to include this title in the December edition of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national lifestyle and culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

Poor Gabriel Dax. He lost his mother in a house fire when he was only six years old. Raised by an uncle, he tried to put his life on track but suffered recurrent nightmares, reliving the fire, and his escape night after night.

As a travel writer, he goes off to the Congo of the 1960s, where an old friend makes it possible for him to interview Patrice Lumumba. That interview becomes a defining moment in Gabriel’s life as it seems there are unknown and possibly unscrupulous forces who are far too interested in what transpired during that meeting. And then lumumba dies.

Attractive and enticing, Faith Green, seems to follow naive Gabriel back home to London, where she recruits him to do small paid favors as a minor link in the MI6 network. Could Gabriel’s brother have set this up? Is Faith to be trusted? Is Gabriel’s life and or freedom in danger?

Concurrently, Gabriel enters a therapy relationship with Dr Haas, an uncredentialed but seeming effective counselor charged with helping him get to the root of his disturbing dreams. Can she be trusted? Is she who she claims to be?

As a spy story, this well written thriller had me captivated from the very beginning. Boyd did a fantastic job of keeping the suspense going until the very end and eventually tying things together neatly enough but not so neatly as to seem absurd. I enjoyed this thriller that kept me guessing throughout.

Five bright stars for a book I highly recommend. Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing an ARC in return for my unbiased review. It will be published shortly, December 3, 2024. Go get it! You won’t be sorry.

I’m a longtime admirer of William Boyd’s work, and I think this is one of his most intriguing. Gabriel Dax was orphaned when his mother died in a house fire that he barely escaped. Decades later, he is a successful travel writer, but nightmares about fire make him an insomniac, and he is plagued by his inability to remember the details of that deadly night.

Changes in Gabriel’s life begin in 1960, when he is unexpectedly invited by an old friend to interview Patrice Lumumba, president of the Congo, who is killed shortly after Gabriel’s interview. At the same time, Gabriel decides to enter into psychotherapy to get help with his insomnia, which leads him to investigate to see if he can learn more about the fire that has so affected his life.

Soon after his return from the Congo, he is approached by an attractive MI6 agent named Faith, who asks him to travel to Spain and perform a simple errand. Gabriel’s much older brother, Sefton, who works at the Foreign Office assures Gabriel that Faith really does work at MI6. Gabriel’s agreement, on almost a whim, takes him deeper and deeper into the mysterious world of spycraft, where he views himself at first as a useful idiot and a pawn, but gradually takes initiatives to learn exactly what is going on—which, in the early 1960s, is a lot.

This is a slow burn of an espionage novel, particularly attractive because the leading character is an amateur, which has the effect of making the reader feel a part of Gabriel’s efforts to understand what he’s gotten himself into and to take some control over his second life as a spy. There is a subtle theme of a mouse infestation of Gabriel’s apartment that symbolizes Gabriel’s own position in the spy world.