Europe in Autumn

My word, that certainly didn't go where I expected it to go. I thought I was reading near-future Le Carre, but it turned into...well, something else. Definitely looking forward to the inevitable sequel.

Europe in Autumn has variously been described as a cross between LeCarré and Christopher Priest, or Deighton meets Kafka. It ends up being being both less and more than those things, but is nonetheless a hugely enjoyable read.

So, we have a dystopian spy thriller set in an alternative Europe where the EU has crumbled after multiple economic crises and ever smaller nation states (or polities) are springing up all over the place. Our hero is Rudi, a young Estonian working as a chef in a restaurant in Poland, who finds himself recruited into Les Coureurs des Bois, a mysterious organisation that, for a price, will move any package (be it files, hardware or people) across any border. They employ all the old tradecraft of a security service - dead drops, stringers, brush passes, legends - and Rudi soon finds himself entrusted with ever more dangerous assignments. Until, after a Situation in Berlin goes disastrously wrong, he finds himself hunted by both his employers and several other security services - with no idea why.

The novel moves at a breathless pace, moving us from Poland to Berlin, Tallin to London, Scotland (a virtually bankrupt independent Scotland at that) to Prague as Rudi races to stay ahead of a Kafkaesque conspiracy that threatens not only him, but everyone he comes into contact with. Hutchinson has constructed a great thriller and fleshes out the central conceit of a splintered Europe brilliantly. Some of the polities Rudi visits and how and why they came into being are fascinating. Of special importance is The Line, a transcontinental railway stretching all the way to Siberia, that has declared its own independence. Then, in the last third of the story, we take a left turn into something altogether stranger.

This is a thriller unlike any other, fusing espionage with hi-tech thrills and elements of Science Fiction, but all rooted in a totally believable alternative Europe. Fittingly a lot of the action takes place in the colder parts of Eastern Europe, giving the novel a bleak, Cold War feel, while some of the tech employed wouldn't be out of place in a Mission Impossible movie.

Ultimately Rudi takes his fate into his own hands to try and find out what is going on and who is behind it all. What he does find is not your usual conspiracy and Hutchinson leaves us wanting more. Luckily he's written a trilogy (Europe at Midnight, followed by Europe in Winter), so there's plenty to get your teeth into.

If you fancy something out of the ordinary for your spy fix you'd do well to give this a go. Recommended.

An interesting start promised much but then fails to deliver and eventually becomes a complete disappointment. The structure of the book also adds to a piecemeal feeling.