‘The Predicament’ by William Boyd

I went to an ‘author event’ in a Marylebone church last week (September 2026) – organised by The Times – at which William Boyd was interviewed about his work in front of a large audience (my kind of people) and also took a few questions. I guess most of us were fans of his work, and he was, as always, very eloquent and pleasantly modest about his writing, almost appearing surprised by his own continuing success. He also answered questions with extraordinary directness and candour, even speculating about possible casting for a television adaptation of his Gabriel Dax novels.

The series so far comprises three books – ‘Gabriel’s Moon’, which I read last month, ‘The Predicament’, and a new one, ‘Cold Sunset’, which has just been published. I read ‘The Predicament’ rather more rapidly than I would ideally have liked to because I was concerned that a spoiler or two might slip out at the meeting – as indeed happened – and I wanted to finish it before then.

This novel starts just a few weeks after ‘Gabriel’s Moon’ ends and is essentially a continuation of the story, involving the same central characters. We are now in 1962 and Gabriel, our travel-writer-cum-spy, is sent first to Guatemala and then to Berlin on various missions for MI6 which he does not fully understand. Gradually, all becomes clearer, both to him and to us as readers.

Part of the pleasure lies in the fact that Gabriel is not really a spy at all. He is an intelligent and observant writer who has found himself drawn into the secret world, and he consequently spends much of the novel unsure about the significance of what he is being asked to do or about the motives of those giving him his instructions. We know only a little more than he does. It gives the novel an appealingly old-fashioned quality. Espionage here is less about extraordinary technology and spectacular action than about meetings in bars and hotel rooms, coded messages, false identities, on-foot surveillance and the perennial problem of deciding whom to trust.

It is all very well done, of course. William Boyd knows exactly how to tell a story, create compelling characters and put them in difficult situations. He weaves fact and fiction together with enormous skill, while also very effectively evoking the places in which Gabriel, Faith and the other characters live and work. Guatemala and divided Berlin are not simply exotic backdrops but part of the atmosphere of uncertainty that runs through the novel.

The early 1960s setting is particularly effective. This is recognisably the Cold War, but Boyd wears his historical research lightly and never allows it to overwhelm the story. Real events and people drift in and out of Gabriel’s fictional world. JFK appears in Berlin to deliver his famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech, and the passage surrounding his visit is particularly striking. For a few pages Gabriel's private and rather murky adventures intersect with one of the great public moments of the Cold War.

And there is something else I find I increasingly like about these novels. Beneath the mechanics of the thriller, Boyd is interested in uncertainty. He explores the difference between what people appear to be and what they really are, and how little we sometimes understand the motives of those around us. He writes about the ease with which an essentially ordinary person can become entangled in events much larger than himself. Gabriel is an engaging central character precisely because he is not James Bond. He makes mistakes, misunderstands things and is sometimes manipulated, but remains curious enough to keep going.

A very accomplished and wholly believable literary thriller, and an excellent continuation of ‘Gabriel’s Moon’. I am now looking forward to reading ‘Cold Sunset’, after which according to the man himself there will be a break from Gabriel Dax while – such good news – William Boyd publishes another of his wonderful whole life novels.