Legacy(2001)

Alan Judd

From Alan Judd, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize for The Devil’s Own Work and author of the acclaimed biography Ford Madox Ford --a mesmerizing tale from the golden age of espionage.

It is the mid-1970s, the height of the Cold War. Charles Thoroughgood, recently discharged from military service, begins, rather comically, his training at MI6. But on one of his first real assignments, the charming but inexpert spook learns from a former Cambridge classmate a secret that threatens to end his career just as it Charles’s deceased father, a decorated military hero, is suspected of having worked for the KGB. As Charles struggles to uncover the truth, ultimately forced to choose between honoring his father and the inexorable code of the Secret Service, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the vortex of the international intelligence machinery--far deeper than any veteran spy, much less a novice, could ever imagine.

Authentic and elegantly told, Legacy is an utterly satisfying new take on a classic genre.