The Traitor by Ava Glass

Published by Bantam on September 19, 2023

Emma Makepeace is a predictable spy novel heroine. She volunteers for dangerous assignments, expresses her displeasure when her bosses want her to play it safe, disregards their instructions when she feels she is the only one who can complete the mission, outfights thugs, and exposes the mole. The existence of a mole is one of the plot elements that makes The Traitor predictable, but nothing about the story is fresh.

Emma is in MI6. Despite her success in Alias Emma, she feels her gender is a barrier to the assignments she deserves. She begins the novel by trying to catch a Russian who is laundering money through a British bank. Emma is pulled off that project and tasked with figuring out why a low-level MI6 number cruncher was murdered. The investigation brings her to a Russian oligarch who is suspected of selling chemical weapons. She joins the staff of the oligarch’s yacht with the hope she will find evidence of those sales.

Emma follows the usual path of an undercover agent. She takes risks to search the oligarch’s yacht-office, dodges the suspicions of the oligarch’s security thug, and befriends (uses) the oligarch’s gorgeous, bored, drug-addled girlfriend. The oligarch eventually learns that Emma is a government agent. While MI6 blames that discovery on Emma’s tradecraft, Emma is convinced that someone sold her out to the oligarch. Hence, the obligatory mole.

Later in the novel, Emma befriends (uses) another oligarch’s girlfriend. This oligarch is the boss of the oligarch whose yacht she infiltrated. Emma thinks that surveilling him will let her discover the mole. Well of course it will, and of course Emma’s plan places her in grave danger.

Emma has almost no personality. Her complaints about not being taken seriously because of her gender are at odds with the important assignments she receives. She feels unappreciated because she has sacrificed any semblance of a personal life to serve king and country. Her last relationship fell apart because she couldn’t tell her boyfriend why she was always jetting off without notice. Although she bemoans her fate, Emma manages a spark of romance with another MI6 agent. This leads to cheesy sentences like “With Jon, though, everything felt possible” — sentences that would be at home in a romance novel.

Fortunately, the cheese is not overdone. Unfortunately, the plot — including the identity of the mole — is entirely predictable. Emma outfights large thugs with blows that are only vaguely described and occasionally stabs them with a tiny knife. The plot is mundane, the action is underdeveloped, and the compulsory mole subplot is so obvious that the reader will guess the mole’s identity well before the reveal. Had the mole been anyone else, I might have recommended the novel without reservations. I thought Ava Glass might at least try to surprise the reader, but she makes no effort at all.

While Glass has technical ability as a writer, she fails todeliver the suspense and credible action that spy novels require. The Traitor is at best a time-killer for spy fiction fans who are waiting for a better novel to give them their espionage fix.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Alias Emma by Ava Glass

Published by ‎ Bantam on August 2, 2022

Russian assassins have been killing former Russian scientists who were once affiliated with Elena Primolov, a Russian nuclear physicist who was an asset of MI6. Charles Ripley was once Elena’s handler and perhaps her lover. Ripley spirited Elena and her family out of Russia just before the KGB was going to swoop down upon her. Years later, Ripley has a senior position in the Secret Intelligence Service. When he learns that Russians who were once close to Elena are being targeted, Ripley moves Elena to a secure location. Just how secure it might be is open to question. Another Russian lodged in a safe house was just killed, leading Ripley to suspect that a Russian mole is working in the SIS.

Ripley is training a young agent whose code name is Emma Makepeace. He gives her a meaningless assignment to get her out of the way, then tasks her with persuading Elena’s son Michael to stay with his protected mother. Michael is a pediatric oncologist in London and wants nothing to do with cloak-and-dagger shenanigans until he changes his mind after the second time Emma saves his life.

Ed Masterson wants Ripley’s job. Does he undermine Ripley and Emma because he is a double agent or is he merely ambitious? Ripley’s future is unclear by novel’s end, as is the identity of the mole, assuming one exists (and in spy fiction, one always exists).

Most of Emma’s adventure involves an extended chase scene. To get Michael to safety, Emma must tamp down her growing lust for the doctor while navigating their way through London as they are being pursued by Russian assassins. The tour of London’s back alleys and underground waterway (to avoid the city’s network of cameras that the Russians have somehow hijacked) adds atmosphere to a story that is competent but unremarkable.

Emma is a bit of a lightweight as fictional spies go, likeable enough but not memorable. The reader doesn’t spend enough time with other characters to learn anything about them, apart from one-dimensional Michael, who is a stereotype of a perfect man. He loves kids and saves them from cancer. What could be better? How sad for Emma that her duty is to Queen and Country rather than her naughty bits.

While the ending wraps up the story of Russian assassins, it leaves enough questions unanswered to make clear that Alias Emma is the first in a series that will feature Emma’s adventures in espionage. Spy novel fans won’t put Alias Emma on top of their stack of 2022 spy novels, but it is worth reading as an introduction to a series that might gain more depth and intrigue as it progresses.

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