Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on June 8, 2021
The Old Enemy continues and perhaps concludes the story that began in Firefly. While The Old Enemy is the third book in a series, a reader can enjoy it as a standalone thriller.
The novel begins with the murder of a retired and revered spy named Robert Harland. As death is approaching, Harland manages to leave a message for his wife that identifies his killer. Finding the code that explains the message is one of the many tasks that Harland’s old friend, Paul Samson, eventually undertakes.
Before he learns of Harland’s death, however, Samson is busy protecting Zoe Freemantle, who works for an organization called GreenState. Samson has been assigned that task by Macy Harp, the head of the private intelligence firm that is Samson’s employer. Samson doesn’t know why he’s protecting Freemantle, nor does Freemantle know that Samson has been hired to protect her. She might even think he’s stalking her. Samson only knows that Freemantle seems to have a connection to a building that has attracted the attention of government agencies in Great Britain and elsewhere. As Freemantle approaches that building, someone attacks Samson with a knife, but whether the attacker was targeting Samson or Freemantle is unclear.
As all of that unfolds, Denis Hisami is preparing to give testimony before Congress. Hisami is married to Anastasia Christakos. In an earlier novel, Samson rescued Anastasia from a kidnapping and now carries a torch for her. Hisami is about to reveal a major conspiracy that has reached high levels of government in the US and UK, but he’s poisoned before he reaches that point in his testimony.
Samson initially wonders whether Russians are getting even with all the people who played a role in recovering Anastasia from her kidnappers. The murder of Harland and the attempted murders of Hisami and Samson turn out to be part of a more complicated conspiracy. Samson pieces the conspiracy together with the help of his hacker friend Naji Touma, a resourceful young man Samson rescued in Firefly. Samson finds it difficult to pin down Naji to find out what he knows, a difficulty of intelligence gathering that bedevils Samson throughout the novel.
Despite the conspiracy’s complexity, the reader isn’t likely to get lost. Henry Porter provides internal summaries and other reminders of events that are critical to the plot, including important moments from the first two novels. The plot never becomes convoluted. Porter peppers the plot with action scenes without dumbing down the story. Like most fictional conspiracies, this one is driven by money and power. I’ll give Porter credit for crafting a credible conspiracy, or at least one that is more plausible than a typical Ludlum conspiracy.
I also give Porter credit for creating an interesting character in Paul Samson. He has the kind of tortured personality that makes a spy sympathetic. The plot takes Samson to various settings around the world while making clear that “the old enemy” — Russia — is still the one most likely to make serious trouble for western democracies. I don’t know if he intends to bring back Porter in future novels, but he is a worthy addition to the canon of fictional spies who make espionage fiction so enjoyable.
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