A Loyal Traitor – Tim Glister

It’s 1966. London is swinging, and the Cold War is spiralling.

Clear cut lines have faded to grey areas. Whispers of conspiracies are everywhere. Spies on both sides of the iron curtain are running in circles, chasing constant plots and counterplots. And MI5 agent Richard Knox is tired of all of it.

But when Abey Bennett, his CIA comrade in arms, appears in London with a ghost from Knox’s past and a terrifying warning that could change the balance of power in the Cold War for good, he has to fight to save the future.

He must also face an agonising choice: who will he believe, and who will he betray – his duty to his country or his loyalty to his friends?

A Loyal Traitor is the follow-up to Tim Glister’s 2021 novel, Red Corona. I must confess that I didn’t realise this when I was asked if I wanted to take part in the blog tour for the book, but you can happily (as I did) read this as a standalone. Though on the strength of A Loyal Traitor I’ll be jumping into Red Corona as soon as I can!

I loved this book. It’s a cracking spy novel with some definite shades of sixties-era Bond, with plenty of twists and turns and secret agent shenanigans. MI5 agent Richard Knox returns to London from a mission in Canada and meets a CIA colleague from his past, along with someone he thought long dead.

Great characters, solid action scenes, and a superb sense of time and place lift A Loyal Traitor above your regular spy novel. The wheels within wheels are intricately plotted but never confusing, and I found myself flicking through just one more chapter to find out what happened next.

A Loyal Traitor by Tim Glister is published by Point Blank in February 2022. Many thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the blog tour, and to the publisher for an advance ebook to review.