Henry Porter’s Firefly trilogy of spy novels begins in Syria with the flight of a young boy and his family from the brutal and repressive ISIS regime that wins control of his village, replacing the brutal and repressive government regime.
Across the three novels, the story travels with Naji and Paul Samson, the former MI6 agent sent to find him, through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, London, Germany, Washington DC, the Baltics and many other places besides.
As the plot deepens and develops, what Porter reveals is the interconnectedness not just of nation states but of all of the major story arcs you can currently see daily in the news: the refugee crisis; the rise of the populist right; the use of data to manipulate voting patterns; the assault on democracy; the post Cold War ambitions of Putin´s Russia.
Porter is a past master of the spy novel, with his end-of-Cold-War series featuring MI6 agent Robert Harland (who makes a reappearance here) bringing to life espionage in the 1980s. Here his canvass illustrates a new landscape, which with careful analysis proves itself to be not so dissimilar to the old. Information is still power and good tradecraft still the hallmarks of the spooks but where the key tools have changed to mobile phones, drones, artificial intelligence and processing power.
There is still space for an exciting car chase across borders, for action in remote locations, for daring rescues and wild shoot outs. And it is the combination of elements – skillfully built character arcs, tension and pace in the narrative and the topicality and power of the issues addressed – that makes these novels so powerful and compelling.
I devoured all three in less than three weeks. We are blessed at present to have a fine cadre of British spy writers from which to choose, and Porter stands with the best.