Published by Endeavour Press on June 27, 2016
In the Name of the Queen has a 2016 copyright, although it appears to have been first published in Great Britain in 2012. In any event, unlike some of the novels that Endeavour Press has resurrected, this one is of fairly recent vintage.
Mike Farrah is in military intelligence. His father is Lebanese and he speaks Arabic fluently. He is recruited by MI6 to impersonate a Jordanian billionaire, the son of a man who has long been dead.
The mission requires Farrah to seduce a Saudi woman whose father is a banker. In fact, he is suspected of being al Qaeda’s banker. Farrah’s minders hope he can help them locate the banker so that he can be snatched by the CIA, which does the dirty work for MI6.
After a good bit of training (including instruction in the art of seduction), Farrah goes to Cairo where he assumes his undercover identity. The beautiful woman is also living in Cairo because she cannot tolerate the intolerance of Saudi Arabia, and is particularly unwilling to be treated as inferior because of her gender. The woman’s brother, on the other hand, has more extreme views and considers everyone in Cairo -- particularly Farrah -- to be decadent and unworthy of his sister’s attention. That, of course, leads to a clash between Farrah and the brother.
Some aspects of In the Name of the Queen are predictable, but the novel also takes a couple of unexpected twists. Farrah learns that he cannot trust anyone -- particularly Mossad, a devious agency that is as dangerous as the enemy he is trying to battle. All good espionage novels are about betrayal, and the question in this one is whether Farrah will betray the beautiful woman and her father before he is betrayed by the people who are supposedly on his side.
Sex scenes tend to be cheesy (“quivering manhood”) and awkward (“exploded in a hot explosion”) as John MacRae proves himself to be one of those British authors to whom the prose of sex does not come naturally. I’m not quite sure I understood Farrah’s motivation for certain actions he takes as the story reaches its climax, and I was unhappy with a couple of unanswered questions that dangle at the novel’s end.
On the other hand, the story is good, the pace is steady, and action scenes are both credible and exciting. The plot does not overreach, which sets In the Name of the Queen apart from most modern thrillers. Characters have a reasonable amount of depth. In the Name of the Queen isn’t in the top tier of spy fiction, but fans of the genre should enjoy it.
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