At its heart The Dying Light has two premises. The first is that the combination of the anti-terrorist legislation and other surveillance tactics and methods introduced by current and recent governments holds the potential to undermine the freedom of the British people totally. The second is that we are all in grave danger of allowing this to happen through our general ignorance of the changing legal framework, our apathy and our willingness (prompted by state propaganda) to exchange some of our basic human rights in exchange for our safety from events such as 9/11 and 7/7.
This is natural territory for espionage writer Henry Porter to explore in fiction, given his four year campaign to educate his readers about the danger of Britain's slide into becoming a surveillance society in which basic freedoms are being rapidly eroded by government - as evidenced by this recent piece in the Daily Mail.
Porter casts us forward to 2014 to illustrate the impact these developments could have. David Eyam, a former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and confidant of the Prime Minister, is killed in a bomb blast in Colombia - apparently he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when his close friend Kate Lockhart, herself a former spook, attends his funeral, she quickly discovers that others are desperate to protect the secrets of Eyam's life and death: desperate enough to kill anyone who stands in their way.
Lockhart is soon at the heart of a political conspiracy that leads to the very top and one that is underpinned by the volatile combination of money and power, the ego and paranoia of a politican and the ruthless manipulation of legislation to serve personal ambition.
At times a storyline in which peacetime Britain effectively became a police state strayed into territory I considered a little unrealistic, but then I reminded myself that the legal framework that allowed it actually exists now. And of course the other factors required have already existed: vain, egomaniacal politicians; greedy businessmen; and, yes, a passive population largely unaware of the dangers.
And that in turn made The Dying Light a little bit frightening at times, because it does not take much of a mental leap to imagine it happening and after that the leaps to other totalitarian horrors become smaller and simpler. A slippery slope we already seem to have taken a step on.
If all that makes The Dying Light sound like a polemic on the dangers of CCTV and internment, then I should point out that it is also an exciting story, which begins like a classic tale of espionage before developing into a gripping political thriller that one day will make a perfect television drama for the BBC's Sunday 9pm slot.
The characters are recognisable and therefore credible and Porter deftly brings his story to the boil and a dramatic and satisfying conclusion.
So don't let the fact that Henry Porter occasionally writes for the Daily Mail put you off. This is a book with an important story to tell and one that is well told.
