Gabriel’s Moon – William Boyd

Gabriel Dax, when the story opens in 1960, is a thirty-year-od freelance travel writer. He lives alone but has a girlfriend, Lorraine. It is a relationship he finds satisfactory but to which he is not committed. She would like to move in, but, well, he’s away a lot and there’s his nightmare induced insomnia to consider, so perhaps not, he says.

The nightmares, recurrent dreams of fire, are triggered by a childhood tragedy when he was trapped in a burning cottage, He escaped but his mother died. And the fire was attributed to his nightlight, a candle-lit lamp, the shade a model of the moon.

Back to 1960, on an innocent trip to Leopoldville he is invited to interview (despite his protestations that he is a travel writer not a foreign correspondent)  the president of Congo, who wants to place certain things on record. Events unfold from there, and things get complicated for Gabriel. He is contacted by the elegant and enigmatic Faith Green and is persuaded to undertake ‘harmless, risk-free’ and remunerative little courier services for HMG. They escalate and before long Gabriel is embroiled in plot and counter plot, with secret agents and double agents. His inclination to get out is compromised by a growing attraction to his handler, Faith Green.

Meanwhile, he is tackling his insomnia through psychotherapy sessions, leading to a re-examination of the events of the night of the fire. He traces the firemen and the loss adjustor in his search for the truth. Then there is the Lorraine issue.

It is a potent mix, expertly handled by Boyd who deftly manipulates plot, character, and atmosphere to produce a tidy read. It feels a bit Graham Greene (not a bad thing) in its style and commendable brevity. Though I did not warm to Dax as a person, the flaws-and-all character was well drawn and able to carry the sole burden of the narrative effectively.

At the end there is some unfinished business (Faith, Lorraine, the fire, a career as ‘an accidental spy’) so no surprise that two further Gabriel Dax books follow, one published, one in preparation. I suspect I will pick up them up.