Thanks to Matthew and NetGalley for allowing me to read The Scarlet Papers before the publication date. And so begins a chase - For the manuscript. One side eager to publish. The other just as eager to spike. As well as that, we learn the content of said manuscript which is a spy thriller's dream. Can Archer stay one step ahead and get the job done...

LONDON, THE PRESENT DAY: A British academic on the run with the chance to solve one of history's greatest mysteries. The Scarlet Papers has received from endorsements from Peter James, who praised it as a “breathtaking thriller” and a “classic in the making”.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. My thanks to Penguin Random House Michael Joseph for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Scarlet Papers’ by Matthew Richardson. 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. Superbly constructed and written with flair ... this might be the best spy novel of the year Superbly constructed in an elaborate twisty spy yarn. It's highly unlikely that there will be a better espionage novel this year

The premise of The Scarlet Papers is that a (modern day) professor of Cold War history at the LSE is approached by a mysterious figure who promises him 'treasure' in the form of a personal memoir of 'the last undiscovered Cold War double agent'. It's this memoir that forms the second narrative thread of this book, starting in 1946 and covering the next 70 years, not in fine detail but stopping off in 1964, 1992, and 2010. The professor protagonist is a bit of a cliché: bitter, broke, divorcing; the memoirist (more forgivably, perhaps) isn't particularly convincing, either. 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. When he is intriguingly offered access to the alleged memoirs of a ghost in the Intelligence Services, Max is unable to verify the writer or the authenticity. Should he use the highly sensitive contents to make a name for himself, whilst risking his freedom? 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.

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The less obvious error was that in one of the 1964 chapters, an academic was described as driving 'the family Volvo'. Well, Volvo cars did not come to the UK until 1967, and an unofficial import of one in 1964 was highly unlikely for that particular character.

Not one of my favourite go-to genres but the blurb really did interest me and I am not adverse to a splodge of historical fiction so I thought I'd give it a whirl... World War Two events were never going to be clear cut or clean. Wartime was nasty, trust was not automatically given, there were double agents, triple agents and the intelligence services were ruthless in their endeavours.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. I am no aficionado about the things contained within this book but, as the layman, it appears that the author has done his research. Detailing a lot of events post-war regarding espionage and shenanigans that both side got up to. I found some fascinating, others a bit dry, but all worthy of inclusion, and stuff fans of the spy-thriller genre will probably lap up.

At 42, Dr Max Archer is an Associate Professor of Intelligence History at LSE. Having published 2 books which were not very successful, his career has stalled. Meanwhile he sees his peers having successful careers and financial stability. To add to his misery, his lawyer wife has petitioned him for a divorce, leaving him homeless and in debt. 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. 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.' There were times, during my reading of this novel, that I was as confused as I ever wanted to be! A brilliant spy novel, full of authentic details, names that are still familiar to the majority of people even now, and so many twists and red herrings, no one tells the whole truth. 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.It is obvious that Matthew has performed in depth research into the subject of spies, by his use of the details about publicly known spies, from the era of the Cambridge Five to the current day. Max is aware that Scarlet King had been a legendary name in the post-war intelligence community though she now must be in her 90s and a ghost. Max cannot understand why she has reached out to him but there is no way he will refuse the chance to solve one of history's greatest mysteries. Scarlett has written her memoirs in a notebook, that is securely hidden, but these details have to be verified before a publisher will give a final commitment to take on this task. 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. Addictive, original and outrageously entertaining . . . Matthew Richardson proves himself a writer of huge talent and skill' CHARLOTTE PHILBY