Brazzaville Beach

This is the first Boyd I've read and I picked it up after listening to an interview the author did, presumably on the press tour for his new spy novel Gabriel's Moon. I learned in that interview that he's known for his spy fiction and after some time poking at other things, he's back on the espionage and it's quite good. I also scratched down the names of the early career-defining titles. I picked up Brazzaville Beach.

It does not spoil the book to tell you that Brazzaville Beach is not a spy novel. You'd be able to figure that out by reading the back, which I usually don't. It's a book that is set amongst a community of experts studying a colony of chimps in the Republic of Congo. Our protagonist is Hope and she's seeing the chimps do things that upset the theories of the lead scientist in the camp, and her benefactor. Hijinks ensue.

This story goes places. It's a great high wire act that is remarkably propulsive and at the same time adept at peeling back the psychological layers of the protagonist through flashbacks. Where it doesn't go is espionage. Hilariously in hindsight, I spent about the first half of the book waiting for somebody to subtly tip their hand as intelligence. All right, enough with the monkeys, who's spying on who, I thought. Nobody, obviously, that's the other ones.