Just When We Are Safest (1996)

A couple of months back, I wrote of how I often associate the book I'm reading with where I obtained it. That I bought Reg Gadney's Just When We Are Safest in a tiny bookstore in a small English town on a typically rainy day is particularly fitting, given the spy novel's grim, British setting.

The first – and apparently, only decent – instalment in Gadney's Alan Rosslyn series, Just When We Are Safest is a far cry from the overblown adventures of 007 and other fantasised spies. Instead, Gadney presents a still-muddied post-Cold War world in which the British secret service is mired in rivalry and corruption.

When Rosslyn, fresh off the back of the arrest of one of the IRA's most dangerous criminals, witnesses the brutal murder of his lover, Mary Walker, he becomes entangled in a terrorist plot aimed at the very heart of MI5.

Just When We Are Safest's characters are well drawn, with Gadney spending a surprising amount of time fleshing out his key antagonist, Anna McKeague. Rosslyn, meanwhile, is a wonderfully conflicted character, battling a case that's becoming increasingly personal.

It's a largely character-driven story, as Rosslyn treks over the British countryside interrogating suspects on the trail of his lover's killers. Gadney is proficient at capturing the novel's moody, sullen atmosphere; there's virtually no levity here. The book's climax, in which Rosslyn wades through murky sewerage in an attempt to access MI5's Lambeth headquarters undetected, is an apt culmination of this bleak, dark and often brilliant spy thriller.