Another year, another William Boyd book [affiliate link]. I make that sound like a bad thing, but really it isn’t.

This one won’t go down as a classic, but it’s thoroughly entertaining and fast-paced, zipping between Guatemala, London and Berlin in the early sixties. It has the usual Boyd mix of well-researched historical details and character moments. He makes it seem effortless. Maybe it is easy for him now, having written so many novels, but it all works.