Short stories with cats set in mainly in TOKYO
A spy thriller set in MARSEILLE and LAOS
8th January 2024
Farewell Dinner for a Spy – a spy thriller set in Marseille and Laos, written by Edward Wilson.
The book opens with a human head being lifted from a steaming cauldron of bouillabaisse in a Marseille restaurant frequented by the mafia. The rest of the story tells us how it got there… William Catesby, an English spy who ‘disgraced’ himself in post WW2 Germany, is given the ‘choice’ of going to to Marseille to restore his credibility and to help in a top secret assignment. Deniability by the UK Government is total. Marseille is in turmoil. The communist dockers’ union is taking on the police and strikebreakers have been bussed in. The police and strikebreakers are supported by the local mafia. There is much violence on the streets.
There are also rumours of a mafia drug trade and the possible involvement of the CIA in that trade. Unlikely bedfellows. William’s brief is to find out exactly what is going on. His investigations take him back to WW2 and the Resistance – and to people he knew then in different roles. A couple of the key ones are now very active in Marseille. He discovers an operation to fly opium in from Laos to Marseille by devious routes (in those days a small plane needed to refuel at least four times en route…). The business is up and running, and William (deeply undercover) goes on one of the trips to tribal lands in the north of Laos where opium is the only cash crop that keeps the farmers alive. There is much local communist inspired unrest. The Laotian royal family are involved.
There is bad feeling and betrayal between one of the drug runners and the mafia. Someone got a bit greedy. It doesn’t end nicely.
Farewell Dinner for a Spy has a ring of believability about it. Certainly there were some connections between the CIA and the South East Asian drug trade. And the references to Kim Philby and Guy Burgess add context to the plot. The plot and the characters are well constructed even if sometimes a little larger than life.
Edward Wilson has been hailed in one review as being ‘poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré‘. That, I think is an exaggeration – but this book is certainly a pretty good spy thriller. And definitely more George Smiley than James Bond.
Tony for the TripFiction team
Join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction) and BlueSky(tripfiction.bsky.social) and Threads (TripFiction)
Please wait...
