Emma Makepeace is back! Last autumn, I absolutely devoured The Chase – Glass’s first book in the ‘Alias Emma’ series, and I was delighted to join the blogtour for the second book in the series, The Traitor.
It begins with a body in a suitcase, Emma is called to join her boss Charles Ripley at a London flat, where she must mask up, to avoid breathing in any remaining poisonous agent. Stephen Garrick had been a numbers analyst, tasked with delving into a Russian oligarch’s financials. But why kill him? Was he getting too close to discovering Andrei Volkov’s secrets, (there are rumours of all kinds of weapons dealing), or was he a traitor?
It appears the former, but there may be a mole in the London organisation. Ripley’s team’s job will be to smoke the mole out. They sit between MI5 and MI6 as a kind of dark ops organisation. They can’t work out how to get close to Volkov though, he’s always on the move, but it is Emma who works out that in between his jetsetting he’ll be on his yacht in the Med.
So, natch, the way to catch dodgy Russians in action and hopefully bag a mole, is to put Emma on the yacht, deep undercover as Jessica in the crew. She’ll be on her own with little chance of escape if it goes wrong. She’ll need to find a way to get into Volkov’s office to look for evidence of dealings with Oleg Federov. Volkov’s bodyguard Cal Grogan is suspicious from the start, even though her legend is watertight, but he takes her phone off her. Volkov’s mistress, Madison, a young trophy model, bonds with Emma/Jessica, but it’s soon clear she knows nothing and hates being effectively trapped on the boat, and spends her time getting high and drunk.
We have a great set up, with Emma in jeopardy all the way through and it increases every day; Grogan is always there somewhere, watching.
Again, we have a completely compulsive page-turning and complex plot, replete with some good twists. There is cracking dialogue and some great villains and a thrilling climax. I did get a pretty good idea of who the mole was before my suspicions were confirmed, but that didn’t matter one iota – because it’s all about Emma’s survival. She is a risk taker, but she’s good at her job; she’s resourceful and utterly loyal to her boss and her country. The Chase was her first mission, and now a year on, she’s growing as a spy, and maturing as a human, realising that the spy’s lot is all about living a lie. Ava Glass has really developed her character further in The Traitor and I just loved it.
If you missed The Chase, you can read The Traitor without needing the backstory; Glass builds in some scattered references to the first book, but you don’t need more to fully enjoy The Traitor. I’m already looking forward to seeing what Ava Glass will put her heroine through next. Loved it!
Source: Review copy – thank you! Penguin paperback original, 416 pages.
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This sounds just as nail-biting as The Chase, and – I guess too like its predecessor – the significance of the title only gains in importance the further the twists and turns take one into the thriller. What fun!
She took the well-tried yacht scenario and certainly gave it a fresh makeover. This was great fun once again.