Having really enjoyed Friends and Traitors I was looking forward to this tale. The author reintroduced some characters, such as Inspector Troy and brought in a lot of new ones. Nell is a thread throughout the story and Joe is now married with children. Erno and Kostya dip in and out and are very well written. Joe is still a rebel and frequently falls foul of authority, for which he has very little respect, and has to be moved around to avoid the consequences. Amid all the spying he is always looking for some fiddle, some way to supplement his income, getting into dangerous scrapes. For me it is this erratic changing of events, scene and people that made the story hard for me to get into. It just did not seem to flow and grip me. The settings are interesting, 60's London, Finland etc. at the height of the Cold War and John Lawton evokes these well. I look forward to the next Joe Wilderness book to resolve the ending of this one.