Inspector Troy is a revelation, if you haven’t read him before start now! This tale brings to life 1950’s Vienna and the story of the Cambridge spies. Starting in 1935, it introduces the reader to Guy Burgess, this ebullient, destructive and unattractive mess of a man and follows his path to his eventual exile in Moscow. The book brings to life the privileged way parts of our society lived, whilst not disguising the often appalling and arrogant behaviour of the rich. The rise of Frederick Troy, a very well-educated son of a Russian émigré who is also a publisher of a less salubrious newspaper, within the ranks of the Metropolitan Police is only lightly covered, though I suspect to discover more the reader must go to the some of the other books in the series, I’ve also noticed that you can also follow Troy’s further rise to higher levels and the ongoing story of own home grown spies in his other novel of 1998 “A little White Death”. The way Lawton interspaces social and cultural history with the novel’s narrative is a delight. I would thoroughly recommend this enlightening read.