Cold Sunset

Life is good for travel writer Gabriel Dax—his books are doing well, and he’s enjoying time in London and his country cottage planning his next title. But when MI6 handler Faith Green informs him that he is needed, this time to get a double agent out of Russia, he brushes off his passport and takes orders. Using his artifice skills (he thinks) to avoid confrontations with Russians, or maybe the Mafia or an insider, Dax skips from the UK to the U.S, Russia, and Finland, with some stops in between during Cold War 1964, an intriguing period in international espionage. I fell for Dax immediately—he’s a Gitane chain smoker, a low-key intellectual, and still a bit naive on how all these spying things work. And he doesn’t mind the attention of dangerous women who may or may not be trying to kill him. Boyd builds this smart tale with a delicious push and pull to the storyline, teasing readers who are trying to work out who will be taken out next. We even get to sit in on Dax’s therapy sessions! It’s easy to drop into this thriller, even though it’s the third in the series. After meeting Gabriel Dax, though, you may want to go back to the beginning; Gabriel’s Moon is the first book in the series and after that is The Predicament.—Dodie Ownes