Good News, Bad News by
David Wolstencroft
pbk out February 05
(Flame)
at £10
Running alongside the glamour of Fleming and the overblown weapon and sex school of
spy writers there's long been a tradition in the genre of portraying "The Game" as being a seedy,
grey, tawdry business; a business staffed by losers, upper class crackpots and bored
depressives. From Ambler to Le Carré and beyond, "Intelligence" and the means by which it is
gathered has been depicted as a mostly tedious job, conducted through dubious and sometimes
downright illegal means with at best ambiguous results. And so it is here, with David
Wolstencroft's debut novel, the tale of two seemingly innocuous colleagues, Charlie and George,
who work together developing tourists' photographs in a booth on the underground below Oxford
Circus.
This being a novel very much driven by plot twists it's probably not wise to go into plot
detail too much, but needless to say Charlie and George are not what they seem to be and the
situation is not what it seems to be.The return of a beautiful and mysterious regular to get a
roll of film developed sets Charlie to questioning George's credentials and, eventually, through
fate and misunderstanding the whole thing kicks off.
Wolstencroft has a screenwriter's knack for a driving narrative and tight dialogue (past
work includes the TV series Spooks). He's also obviously well versed in the nuts and bolts of the
undercover business from the tools to the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the trade, but the strength
of the novel lies in the way in which Wolstencroft takes the Le Carré template, modernises it, and
makes it his own. Charlie and George are loners; men in dingy London bed-sits worn out with
guilt over past acts; struggling to hold onto any kind of truth while living a lie. Eventually they are
forced by events to crisis and an examination of conscience with, literally, explosive results. So
far so heavy, and the stamp of Le Carré is obvious, but all this is viewed through Wolstencroft's
particularly fine eye for the nuances and absurdities of modern London life and with a major dose
of the tragicomic. Recommended.
Good News, Bad News by
David Wolstencroft
