"When I picked up this novel
about psychic British spy, Tana Standish, and her adventures in 1970s
Czechoslovakia, the spy template I thought it would adhere to is the James Bond
one. After all, that is already an outsized world and surely a beautiful spy
with precognitive abilities could be dropped in fairly seamlessly.
But Nik Morton actually foxed me, by instead opting for the John Le CarrĂ© model. This is a gritty and realistic feeling world, with dirt under its fingernails. And it’s beautifully realised. You can almost smell the Turkish coffee and cheap cigarettes in the cafes... But is there any way to make a psychic spy fit seamlessly into this world?
You have your doubts, don’t you?
And yet Morton manages it.
Such is the level of detail and ambition, that Morton soon sweeps the reader up in the narrative and creates such a convincing canvas that we can easily accept the central conceit. Bouncing between different times and locations, he has created a book which feels big in scope, an adventure story with a supernaturally gifted protagonist that still feels absolutely real.
I was expecting a light throwaway read with Mission: Prague, but was glad I got something far more ambitious."
But Nik Morton actually foxed me, by instead opting for the John Le CarrĂ© model. This is a gritty and realistic feeling world, with dirt under its fingernails. And it’s beautifully realised. You can almost smell the Turkish coffee and cheap cigarettes in the cafes... But is there any way to make a psychic spy fit seamlessly into this world?
You have your doubts, don’t you?
And yet Morton manages it.
Such is the level of detail and ambition, that Morton soon sweeps the reader up in the narrative and creates such a convincing canvas that we can easily accept the central conceit. Bouncing between different times and locations, he has created a book which feels big in scope, an adventure story with a supernaturally gifted protagonist that still feels absolutely real.
I was expecting a light throwaway read with Mission: Prague, but was glad I got something far more ambitious."
Thank you, F.R. Jameson for commenting on Goodreads.
The full review can be read there.
Mission: Prague
Available on Amazon as a paperback and an e-book here
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