A Sting in her Tail by Mark Ezra – blog tour

What do old spies do after they’ve retired? If you’re Richard Osman’s Elizabeth, decamped to a retirement village with her husband who has dementia, you keep your hand in, recruiting a band of retirees to form The Thursday Murder Club – looking at cold cases, helping the local constabulary out, making the most of contacts, but never quite letting on to your new friends who you were in your former life. That’s Osman’s take…

Cut to the protagonist of Mark Ezra’s first novel. As it begins, seventy-something Felicity Jardine is planning to end it all at the river with stones in her pockets, and a note left behind – when she sees a car baby seat go past – with a baby in it! Her plans change in an instant and she manages somehow to rescue the child.

The baby’s eyes were shut, but it breathed. I woke it. That is, I gave it a prod. Its eyes opened. Blue, unfocussed eyes, pupils dilated. They closed again. The child had been drugged.
What kind of person would drug a child? … The child was well fed, healthy. How had it come to be in the river? Why was nobody out looking for it?

Except there was. A man on the opposite bank was searching for something. Felicity is able to use all her years of training to remain unnoticed, taking the baby girl home as soon as he’d gone, and opting to do some research before telling the police. However, circumstances mean speeding things up, first one of her neighbours who bore a resemblance to Felicity is murdered, and two suspicious strangers are asking questions in the village. She needs to get out of there to find out more. First stop is to leave baby Alice, as she’d called her with another old spy friend before heading off to London, where with ingenuity that Mick Herron’s River Cartwright would be proud of, she manages to get a good way into the Houses of Parliament before being blocked.

‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m here to see the Permanent Under Secretary of State for Defence.’
‘I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment.’ She had reached under her desk. For a gun? More likely an alarm to summon help to deal with the mad woman in muddy wellington boots.
‘I want to see him now,’ I said, firmly. I stepped around her desk. She stood to block me.
‘He does not see anyone without an appointment.’
I pushed straight past her.
‘He’ll bloody well see me. I’m his fucking mother.’

Yes, Felicity has a son in a high powered job, and a daughter too, and she admits to being a mostly absent mother and barely maternal at all, but finding the baby has awakened a grandmotherly need in her. Her son meanwhile can’t or won’t help and she’s sent packing. After a few days and another close encounter with one of the strangers, she takes a circuituous route to visit another old colleague, Patrick. She’d worked for him as a spy in the German Chancellery in Bonn in 1976. Baby Alice is left with Felicity’s daughter Eva, who lives with an Italian lady called Silvana, and they instantly fall for the baby.

For the next part of the story, we find out more about her time in Bonn, alternating between then and the novel’s present day – and we begin to realise that things are very complicated indeed and the past and present are linked. Felicity has some hard questions to answer about herself before she can make progress. There will be many obstacles thrown in her path, but as we’ve seen, Felicity has a new mission in life – to find out who Alice’s mother was, and will use all her skills, resilience and resourcefulness to survive at least long enough to solve the mystery and beyond.

What a wonderful character Ezra has created in Felicity (although we can be pretty sure that’s not her real name!). She is a great narrator, snarky, witty, not suffering fools gladly – but it has led to her not having many friends in her retirement – and she will discover some kindred spirits in her village amongst those she’d discounted and hidden away from before the story is finished.

Although this is a first novel, Ezra has worked in the film industry in many roles including as screenwriter, specialising in thrillers, and indeed I could visualise the action on my mind’s screen as I read. This book would make a super movie or mini-series. It has wit, complexity and a cracking pace throughout. The Cold War sections set in Bonn offer a more serious picture as the younger Felicity goes about her spying with mentor Patrick, which contrasts nicely with the only slightly cosier feel of the older Felicity. Most of all though, I hope this is just the beginning for Felicity in her retirement and that we get more – loved it!

Source: Review copy – thank you! No Exit paperback original, 303 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.