You can't hold it too tight, these matters of security

William Boyd is one of the most unappreciated, in the United States at least, novelists of the last two decades. He has written an excellent book on identity, Armadillo, a number of wonderful books set in Africa, including An Ice Cream War and A Good Man in Africa and his 2003 novel, Any Human Heart, stands up any book by Ian McEwan for its psychological exploration. His most recent book, Restless, is a departure, as it is a spy thriller, a literary one to be sure, but nonetheless a spy thriller. For some, for example those put off by Chabon's visit to mystery country, this will be off-putting. For the literati willing to put aside their genre-phobia, this is an excellent read.

The novel has two narrative strands. The first is set in 1976 Britain where an ABD grad student making her living at ESL learns that her dotty old mother was a spy back in the war days. What's more, she thinks someone is coming to kill her. The second strand is a series of journal entries describing the war years. The two stories are tied together as Mother believes she is going to be killed because of the content of the journal.

The spy narrative is a tension filled and outstanding spy story, while the modern story doesn't really stand on its own. The mother becomes involved in an effort to prod the US into the Second World War through the US of disinformation techniques. Her experience in this realm brings into question the veracity of her narrative, and raises the disturbing question about how people manipulate others.

On the literary side, the book directly and indirectly questions whether we can know any other person. The book features a variety of betrayals from the petty to the lethal, and most of these stem from the inability to determine the true nature of a person. The costs of a life of spying are also driven home, especially of the final shot of the mother.