The name is Dax. Gabriel Dax. A review of William Boyd's Cold Sunset

The third instalment in Boyd’s detective trilogy featuring Gabriel Dax, the nonchalant travel writer, British spy and occasional double agent, sends our unlikely hero on yet more unexpected escapades in the service of British intelligence. It's 1964 and more Cambridge spies have been unmasked. From Los Angeles and Moscow to Leningrad and the tiny Greek island of Icarios, Dax travels ostensibly in pursuit of material for his writing, but in reality at the behest of the mysterious Faith Green. She is the secret service agent charged with rooting out the termites — double agents embedded within MI6 — and the woman with whom Dax is incontrovertibly, passionately in love. Is she in love with him - or is it just another subterfuge to get him to do her will?

There is something deliciously knowing about this series, which Boyd is said to have embarked upon after being commissioned to write Solo, one of the post-Fleming series of James Bond novels. The echoes of that author are unmistakable, though tempered by a gentle satirical sensibility. Dax moves with apparent ease between his Chelsea flat and country cottage, and is equally at home in foreign hotel rooms, if not quite the glamorous international establishments and casinos frequented by Bond. Clothing, particularly women’s clothing, receives loving attention: fabrics, shoe toes and heels seem to hold extraordinary interest and dress collars are described almost as minutely as the people wearing them. Fleming was as interested in male attire: Bond's well-cut suits and simple, flatweave woollen ties were a constant in the maddening scenes of his life. Cars, too, are afforded their due. Dax’s own florid travel writing appears in tantalising glimpses, leaving one to wonder whether the whole enterprise is an enormous, affectionate smirk at the conventions of the spy novel and travel writing more generally.

Dax himself is a distinctly unlikely hero. In his thirties, he survives on a meagre income supplemented by Russian bribes, is frequently confused with the relatively obscure English composer Bax, and seems more often to be carried along by events than to be directing them. He falls prey to a succession of femmes fatales with insouciant ease, only to be tormented by agonies of doubt before arriving, sometimes rather abruptly, at a resolution. Yet he is not entirely inept in his espionage. Unlike Bond, he is no master of the situation, and that is part of his appeal. His conscience remains inconveniently alive to the human cost of his profession, even when survival demands that he kill.

Set in 1964, against the embarrassing exposure of Russian agents at home, the novel begins with Dax dispatched to Moscow to assist Kit Caldwell, a British agent who has defected to Russia and now fears the consequences. The attempted extraction is well handled. It may not be quite gripping enough to set the pulse racing, but there are sufficient twists and turns to keep the pages turning. More interesting, perhaps, are the moral aftershocks: Dax’s growing unease at the necessity of killing men in order to protect himself, and the familiar ache of a conscience that refuses to be silenced.

Back in Britain, Dax seeks escape from London, from former lovers and nosy neighbours, and from the suspicion that the Russians may be hunting him down following the exposure of their own deeply embedded agent, Coriolanus. His refuge is Icarios, a small island off Corfu, where he hopes to find peace in the warmth of the Greek sun, the simple pleasures of his villa and the slow rhythms of village life. Faith Green joins him, ostensibly escaping from a job she claims to despise. For a while, the prospect is idyllic. But in Dax’s world, appearances are rarely to be trusted, and what seems safe and settled proves to be yet another exercise in smoke and mirrors.

The author’s style is not altogether easy to categorise. At times straightforward, at others episodic and driven by character rather than plot, it has a distinctly satirical, occasionally playful edge. The reader must be prepared to suspend disbelief: Dax’s suitability as a double agent is debatable, while the procession of attractive women apparently ready to fall into his arms stretches credulity. Yet perhaps realism is not entirely the point. The Bond parallels are there for those who enjoy spotting them, but Dax is no Bond — and certainly no Bax. He is a more fallible, inward-looking creature, driven as much by his own tangled thoughts and desires as by the machinations of the secret services.

Supposedly the final instalment of the trilogy, this novel nevertheless leaves the door ajar. Boyd has hinted that there may be more to come, perhaps even a series of annual adventures. There is certainly scope for further flights of fancy, not least because Dax’s journeys are as much internal as geographical. He is forever escaping: from danger, from responsibility, from the past, and perhaps most of all from himself.

And then there is Faith Green. For all the intrigue, the double dealing and the carefully observed period detail, it is the unresolved question of their relationship that lingers. Will she finally declare her undying love? Or will Dax be left, once again, in a state of uncertainty, wondering whether he has misunderstood the whole affair?

Dax may never rival Bond, but he has a charm and a capacity for getting himself into trouble that is entirely his own.