Yesterday's Spy: The fast-paced new suspense thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Secret Service

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Now, Harry has secretly flown to Tehran to find his son, a novice journalist for the Manchester Guardian, who has been kidnapped. There, he pursues first one lead to his son, then another, encountering lies at every turn. Meanwhile, he finds that MI6 is attempting to frame him as a scapegoat for missions that went wrong during and after World War II. New readers to Deighton might like to start with his infamous novels featuring his nameless working class spy hero, later christened Harry Palmer. Rough-round-the-edges with a criminal past, Palmer has enough about him to keep you intrigued even before his espionage antics… Harry and his journalist son Sean see eye-to-eye on almost nothing and barely speak. But when Sean disappears in Iran after writing an article critical of certain “powers-that-be,” Harry’s on the next plane to Teheran to find him. Harry meets Sean’s Iranian girlfriend, Shahnaz, and together, they begin the search for Sean. That hunt is complicated by civil unrest in Iran caused by American/British attempts to replace socialist Prime Minister Mossadegh with the Shah to ensure access to Iranian oil. It’s even further complicated by something the Americans are demanding from the British, something Harry won’t like very much. Bernard Samson is a spy on the run. But in the murky streets of Berlin, he knows where to hide. Wanted for an act of treachery he has not committed, he must not only escape the grasp of London Central, but get to the bottom of a tangled conspiracy that is about to change everything. Harry turns out to an all action hero as the plot unfolds. It’s much easier to suspend belief when watching these heroics on TV a lot harder with the written word. The role of Shaznah didn’t feel believable.

The emerging story of the forces behind the coup, including both British and Americans as well as senior figures in the Iranian police and army. Before long, he is on the run - not only from a faceless enemy, but from his own past. Which will catch up with him first? I am a big fan of smart espionage, which also makes me a big fan of Tom Bradby. His latest stand-alone outing, “Yesterday's Spy”, provides plenty of action while exposing the moral ambiguities of what we do for king and country. This is a love story because it’s about Harry and Amanda and Sean and Shahnaz. Amanda committed suicide and Bradby blends her story into the relationship between father and son very skilfully. Can Harry not only find Sean but reconcile with him about the family’s past? Both this and the spy story work. Yesterday’s Spy opens in Germany in 1933, where young Harry has been studying mathematics on a term away from Cambridge. We follow him through his recruitment by MI6, his wartime assignments behind enemy lines, and his postwar work sending anti-Communist agents to infiltrate Yugoslavia and Albania. But those missions go badly wrong from the start. Harry falls under suspicion for their failure. Nearly a decade later, he is still under a cloud as a result. But his boss, and Winston Churchill (now Prime Minister again), both support him absolutely. Yet there appear to be others in SIS who do not. Because one of his colleagues in on his tail in Tehran.

Or perhaps you might want to indulge your inner secret agent with Deighton’s Bernard Sampson novels? A trilogy of trilogies set in 1980s England featuring secret agent Sampson and his wife Fiona, this exceptional series cemented Deighton as one of the top spy novelists of his time. Deception has a nasty habit of eating away at people. Lying about your job to your family and neighbors. Lying to your co- workers about the work that you are doing. Lying about the work to your government who is lying about the work they don't want to know what you are doing. Lying to yourself about the importance of what you do, though all everything that exists around you is built up on a very precarious pedestal, and can fall all away with just one truth. Tom Bradby in the historical thriller Yesterday's Son shows the price of deception on one man and his attempt to fix a legacy of wrongs for his only son's safety. This is the first book by Tom Bradby that I have read. His writing style is polished and easy to read. I will certainly be reading more books by him. I have enjoyed each of the Tom Bradby novels I have read so far and would certainly recommend this one. Not only is this a finely crafted spy novel, I also learned something about the 1953 coup in Iran. Names and countries may differ, but political duplicity seems to be one constant in international affairs.

A big thank you to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, Bantam Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I loved the last three books he had written in the Kate Henderson series so was very excited to be invited to read Tom Bradby's latest book. It is 1953. Harry Tower has been a talented British SIS officer for many years. So talented that he’s trusted by Winston Churchill.Thanks to Atlantic Monthly Press/Henry Holt & Co for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. 📚 ❤️ 🥰 On August 19, 1953, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d’etat jointly planned by the United States and Great Britain and led on the ground by the CIA. With the support of the country’s leading mullah, Abol-Ghasem Kashani, Americans under the command of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. restored Mohammad Shah Reza Pahlavi as Iran’s supreme leader. The shah’s brutal, dictatorial regime during the following two decades led directly to the 1979 Iranian Revolution that still echoes in today’s headlines. Now, British journalist Tom Bradby recalls the events of 1953 in Yesterday’s Spy, a fast-paced spy thriller loosely based on the history of the coup.