Dilemma to solve

Nicholas Shakespeare successfully fuses a thriller and a literary novel that is set in bleak late-winter Oxford.

British diplomat with a connection to the Intelligence Services. The other, Rustum Marvar, is an Iranian nuclear physicist, on a temporary research assignment at a university laboratory. (The novel is set after the signing of the Iranian nuclear deal). Marvar’s son, Samir, is like Leandro, a talented footballer, but his wife and baby daughter are at home in Iran, securities for his good behaviour.

Dyer and Marvar come together when their sons are both being bullied by an older Russian boy, an oligarch’s son with a very attractive mother. Then Marvar comes to Dyer in a state of triumph and anxiety. He has created an equation and proved it by experiment which solves the problem of nuclear fusion; put into action, this could solve the world’s energy problems or destroy the world. Is there anyone who can be trusted with it? Not the mullahs in Tehran, though they are holding his wife hostage; not the Americans; not anyone really. Then he disappears, whether voluntarily or not, leaving his equation for Dyer to find, precisely because it is meaningless to him. So he has abdicated his judgement, or rather, passed the responsibility to Dyer.

That’s the set-up. It satisfies the Buchan criterion: that improbable events should remain within the realm of the possible. The thread of credibility may be stretched but is never snapped. The writer of this kind of novel walks a delicate line and it’s often the case that interest which must depend on persuasiveness ebbs as the action quickens. This doesn’t happen here, partly because the sense of place is so strong, partly because everyday life goes on – Leandro has to do his homework, shopping has to be done, meals eaten – and