The Scarlet Papers: ‘The best spy novel of the year’ SUNDAY TIMES

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He has used this to create a factual core scaffold, around which he crafts the fictional story of spies, double agents, the Intelligence Services and Politics, whilst adding some dry humour along the way.

Superbly constructed and written with flair, it manages to debunk John le Carré's world and to reaffirm its mystique. It's highly unlikely that there will be a better espionage novel this year The Scarlet Papers has received from endorsements from Peter James, who praised it as a “breathtaking thriller” and a “classic in the making”. LONDON, THE PRESENT DAY: A British academic on the run with the chance to solve one of history's greatest mysteries Scarlet King is an old lady, who was a super spy, a legend in her own lifetime. She wants to publish her memoirs, a tell all book, that will embarrass both the UK and American governments, and may push the boundaries of what is permitted in the Official Secrets Act. Moving from the end of the Second World War, through the Cold War to the present day, it conjures up the murky world of secret agents, double agents, sleepers and moles. References to real life individuals such as Kim Philby, James Jesus Angleton and Maurice Oldfield (reputed to be one of the models for John le Carré's George Smiley), along with figures in the world of espionage from more modern times, give it an air of authenticity. (As can be seen from the bibliography, the author's research has been extensive.) And although the story is fictional, many of the elements seem completely plausible. Worryingly so, if you believe in the reality of a secret state. And it wasn't so long ago that the existence of someone very like one of the main characters in the story was revealed, after many years in the shadows.Archer himself was a bit lame initially, but I guess that's included to speak to circumstance and why he takes on the challenge. Which, let's face it, is quite perilous! I did warm to him along the way and was sad to say goodbye at the end. Addictive, original and outrageously entertaining . . . Matthew Richardson proves himself a writer of huge talent and skill CHARLOTTE PHILBY There are good interrogation descriptions, which leave the reader quite breathless at the speed of questions and answers. The research is intense and detailed, with actual names and events to add verisimilitude to this story. The ending is astounding, will make you take a sharp intake of breath, there was not a hint of this throughout the book. Astonishing . There are a few twists and turns along the way. Some very clever, others predictable. And also some quite worthy obfuscation. As with My Name Is Nobody (the other book by this author that I have read) the story and all its interconnected parts flowed very well. Culminating in a satisfying ending. And there's the first problem. If this was just your standard two-viewpoint, twin-timeline narrative, that would be fine. But the memoir is written like fiction (for unconvincing reasons). As fiction, it reads well, but as a supposedly non-fiction genre inserted, mise-en-abyme style into the other narrative, it doesn't really work.

LONDON, THE PRESENT DAY: A British academic on the run with the chance to solve one of history's greatest mysteries. My thanks to Penguin Random House Michael Joseph for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Scarlet Papers’ by Matthew Richardson. Both of these errors seemed like they were either deliberately planted so as to be revealed as such later—or, simply the result of somewhat superficial research. Because while there is clearly research in this novel, it feels like a stone skipping across a lake rather than a deep dive. Hence my feeling that there was too much distance, as a result, probably, of too much telling as opposed to showing. Dr Max Archer has never forgotten the injustice of being turned down by the intelligence services as a young man, so now writes about them instead as an academic at the London School of Economics. He’s also thwarted in his career, not achieving the professor’s chair he wants so badly, and his wife has just divorced him. But then he is approached by Scarlet King, a high-ranking spy in her nineties. She was the first woman head of the Soviet desk at MI6 during the Cold War. She wants him to write her memoirs – The Scarlet Papers of the title. They hold a mind-blowing secret about British intelligence. Max is hooked. This is his chance to show the secret services and his wife what they’re missing and win that professorship. However, there’s a problem – life in jail for breaking the Official Secrets Act. Can he and Scarlet manage to publish and be damned before the secret services get onto them?The book is full of characters with messy relationships and exposes the moral dilemmas which spies confront, the isolation inherent in their role and the burden of keeping secrets, even from those you love. As one character observes, 'We were good spies and terrible human beings.' Many of the characters are almost certainly not who they purport to be or are adept at adopting different personas. 'Spying was a performance and the costume, the voice, the initial entrance were as vital as the lines themselves.' Addictive, original and outrageously entertaining . . . Matthew Richardson proves himself a writer of huge talent and skill' CHARLOTTE PHILBY Dr Max Archer is a history professor, who has written many books about the Cambridge Spies, this knowledge alone gives a clue about the nature of these jottings in a notebook. Scarlet wants Max to verify her notes, in preparation to publish. Superbly constructed and written with flair, it manages to debunk John le Carré's world and to reaffirm its mystique. It's highly unlikely that there will be a better espionage novel this year Sunday Times Superbly constructed and written with flair ... this might be the best spy novel of the year Sunday Times

Another part of the blurb speaks of 'high stakes thrills', to which my response is… what? Because it didn't seem particularly thrilling to me, and the stakes didn't ever come across as particularly high. Which is not because the in-universe stakes aren't given to be high, but they did not come across viscerally to the reader as such. I think that's something to do with style, and a distancing effect which arises from the sheer familiarity of much of the material. So the twists and turns, when they arrive, are the result of withholding information rather than inserting disinformation. There's just another chapter in which something else is revealed that we weren't told about earlier.At times, this was as compulsively readable as any spy novel, with the kind of twists and turns you'd expect. 'The best spy novel of the year' trumpets the quote from The Sunday Times which forms part of the blurb. To which my response is… maybe? Because, frankly, great spy novels are few and far between. And when you've read Le Carré, almost everything else pales into comparison, especially when it comes to dialogue, characterisation, tension building. So it's not as if there's much competition, is what I'm saying.