Chris Morgan Jones's debut novel, An Agent of Deceit, was rightly praised for continuing the reconfiguration of the spy novel begun by such terrific authors as Charles Cumming after the Berlin Wall came down and east versus west became too simplistic an analysis of world politics. (With hindsight, of course, it always was.)
But with The Jackal's Share it becomes clear that, actually, Morgan Jones is writing detective as well as spy fiction. The novel is as much Raymond Chandler as John le Carré; as much The Big Sleep as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
Broadly speaking, classic spy fiction twists and tweaks apparently straightforward facts and re-presents them in startling ways. Classic detective fiction starts with a simple job that becomes more complicated with the turn of every page. The Jackal's Share is both.
The author gives a nod to the influence of the classic private eye story when he points out that the offices in protagonist Ben Webster's HQ are named after his colleague's favourite detectives, including Chandler's Marlowe and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe.
The job is apparently straightforward for the returning private spy (or private investigator, according to taste). A charismatic, uber-rich Iranian client wants Webster to find out if there is something dirty about him on record that will explain why an American company is cautious about concluding a massive deal. It doesn't take long for Webster to figure out that the real story which he is discouraged by pretty much everyone he knows from exploring lies in family secrets and the supposedly random killing of one of the billionaire's closest colleagues.
Ben Webster's character has interesting complexities. Like Marlowe, he has his own morality and doesn't much like the wealthy including his own client.
But down these moneyed streets a man must go, although, unlike Marlowe, Webster does it with wife and kids in tow.
The family stuff and the titillating descriptions of Webster's encounters with another woman are a bit tedious and seem written by rote, but Webster's characterisation is strong and carried along in the flow of the plot, which has the broad canvas of a spy novel: Middle Eastern politics are central and there are trips to Lake Como, Dubai and Marrakech.
The author is deft with all his characterisations but, in particular, he has created two genuinely chilling antagonists, one whose menace is horribly physical, the other whose seeming omniscience provides the threat.
He also has an assured sense of place whether in his foreign locations or moving around London a description of swimming in the capital's Hampstead ponds is particularly pleasing.
Chris Morgan Jones has more than equalled his powerful debut and in Ben Webster has created a flawed (of course), likable central character. I look forward to getting to know him better.
