Alison Flood enjoys a chilling debut with resonances of Le Carr�
Compared to John Le Carr� by its publisher, and acquired following "fiercely contested auctions", Chris Morgan Jones's debut arrives with a weight of expectations on its shoulders. But it's clear right from the chilling, detached opening, in which a journalist is indifferently, casually murdered for asking the wrong questions in Kazakhstan, that these are going to be met.
Ranging from Moscow to Berlin to London, An Agent of Deceit follows the story of investigator Ben Webster's attempt to expose the huge money-laundering operations of Russian oligarch Konstantin Malin, a man whose crimes are hidden "deep in Russia, buried under layers of permafrost". Malin is flat-eyed, immensely powerful, hugely dangerous ? "a creature of the Soviet", and a worthy opponent for Webster, a journalist turned investigator still haunted by the death of his friend Inessa in a Kazakh jail 10 years ago.
Webster is delighted to take on the challenge. "This was the sort of case he had signed up for: the sort that makes a difference," particularly when he starts to wonder if Malin might just be the elusive man behind the murder he has been trying to solve for so long. But this is no black-and-white story of easy coincidence, of British spy versus Russian supervillain. Morgan Jones is really interested in Malin's front man, Richard Lock, a strangely naive lawyer who has filtered the oligarch's money through mazes of offshore companies for years and who the author brings to pitch-perfect life. Frightened, lonely, out of his depth, Lock ? "a fool amongst knaves" ? is the man Webster needs to turn in order to bring down Malin. But as the investigator's tenuous leads melt to nothing, as his contacts clam up or disappear, as his family is threatened and Lock's life hangs in the balance, Webster starts to wonder if, even to put Inessa's ghost to rest, he can really go on with the case.
Like the icy eastern winter that seeps through the pages of his novel, Morgan Jones's prose is clean and cold, crisp and ominous. "Even now on a brisk October evening Moscow seemed cold, its air somehow thin and thick at once, lit through the cloud with a yellow grey light that looked to Lock like the colour of contagion," he writes. "Drizzle fell, and it occurred to him at last that this was how Moscow should feel ? uncomfortable, oppressive."
The author has worked at a business intelligence agency himself for the past 11 years ? "advising Russian oligarchs", says his publisher obliquely; they'll no doubt be delighted to read this. He might have failed to paint Webster quite as fully as Lock ? the investigator is something of a cipher compared with the brilliantly vivid lawyer ? and there are a few too many references to batteries being removed from mobile phones during discussions (it must be a spy thing). But this is a world Morgan Jones knows, and it shows. In its intelligence, its crispness, its refusal to recognise anything other than shades of grey, there are undoubtedly resonances of Le Carr� here. But An Agent of Deceit is too good to need the publishing shorthand for "classy thriller": this is a debut that definitely stands on its own merits.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/22/agent-of-deceit-chris-jones
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