MOVE FAST. STAY DARK.
These are the instructions sent to new operative Emma Makepeace
She’s been assigned to track down a man wanted by the Russians and bring him into MI5.
It should be easy. But the Russians have eyes everywhere.
Emma knows that if spotted she and her target will be killed.
What follows is a perilous chase through London’s night-time streets.
But in a city full of cameras, where can you hide?

IN A NUTSHELL
‘The Chase‘ was more John Wick than John Le Carré: fast-paced, violent, action-packed, exciting and requiring an enormous suspension of disbelief. If you want a thrill ride with a kick-ass woman as the lead and just enough contemporary context to give it some grounding in reality, then you’ll enjoy meeting Emma Makepeace.

I’m a fan of contemporary British spy novels. Still, this series had passed me by until I heard Ava Glass being interviewed on ‘Woman’s Hour‘ on Radio 4 about the news that two of the candidates to become the next head of MI6 are women. She presented herself well, established her credentials as a journalist who has worked closely with spies for many years and then plugged her book in a polite low-key way that I admired. I looked her up and found the her 2022 debut novel, then titled ‘Alias Emma‘ and now, for reasons only publishing gurus understand, retitled ‘The Chase‘, was shortlisted for the 2023 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. I checked out the audiobook sample, thought Sophie Colquhoun was a great choice as the narrator and downloaded the book,

My wife and I listened ‘The Chase‘ on a couple of long drives. It provided a welcome distraction. It was engaging, easy to follow and nicely paced. Listening to the all-night-long chase across London with Emma Makepeace trying to keep her charge safe from Russian kill teams was dramatic and exhausting. If the story had only been about the chase, it might have been a sort of female version of a John Wick movie – all action and no character development. Ava Glass avoided this by intercutting the present-day action with scenes from Emma’s past that explained why and how she became a spy, gave context on why she was selected for this perilous assignment and why she wasn’t getting any support carrying it out. 

This was entertaining in an action movie way but, like the action movies, it required a significant effort to suspend disbelief. Much was made of how heavily surveilled central London is but no mention was made of the many Armed Response Units the Met has in place. I struggled to believe in a scenario in which the police made no response to men firing shots from Range Rovers speeding along the banks of the Thames in the middle of the night. 

I enjoyed the thrills the story provided and I admired Emma Makepeace’s stubborn courage but I didn’t feel that I was getting the kind of insider view of the British Intelligence Service that I get from Mick Herron or John Le Carré. Even so, I’ll pick up the next two books in the series when I’m next in the mood for an espionage thriller.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘The Chase’. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample of Sophie Colquhoun’s narration.

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Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by The Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, Ava Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick and a Barnes and Noble book of the month.

Originally from Texas, she graduated from Texas A&M with a journalism degree and got her first job working as a crime reporter for the Savannah Morning News. Later, she became a communication consultant which led to her taking a job with the British Home Office, It was that expericence that gave her the background for her Emma Makepeace novels. Here’s what she says on her website about that experience.

“I never worked for MI5 or MI6. I worked for the Home Office, the British government department that covers police, security, and counter-terrorism. I was there for five years. I was not a spy. I was a communications specialist, with a focus on counter-terrorism communications. My job was to communicate with and about spying. Basically, I was there to try and explain to the public what the counter-terrorism units were doing. Except the counter-terrorism specialists did not want me to tell anyone what they were up to. Which put me, as you can imagine, in a tricky position.

During those years, I worked with people I believe to be spies. I say that because the very fact that someone is or is not a spy is a state secret. They could not legally tell me they were spies. So I could never be absolutely certain which people I worked with were or were not spies, but as with many things in that world, sometimes it was clear. Other times, it was a bit hazier. Intelligence, in my experience, is a hall of mirrors, where nothing is what it seems.

When I talk about this time I am always careful not to reveal any national secrets. But the fact that I worked there, and the work I did – that was not secret. Anything I know that I believe to be a secret I will never talk about or write about. There are no secrets in my novels. I am much more careful than perhaps it seems”