Yesterday’s Spy opens in Germany in 1933, where young Harry has been studying mathematics on a term away from Cambridge. We follow him through his recruitment by MI6, his wartime assignments behind enemy lines, and his postwar work sending anti-Communist agents to infiltrate Yugoslavia and Albania. But those missions go badly wrong from the start. Harry falls under suspicion for their failure. Nearly a decade later, he is still under a cloud as a result. But his boss, and Winston Churchill (now Prime Minister again), both support him absolutely. Yet there appear to be others in SIS who do not. Because one of his colleagues in on his tail in Tehran. Thanks to Atlantic Monthly Press/Henry Holt & Co for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. 📚 ❤️ 🥰 thrillers featuring MI6 operative Kate Henderson. As the title suggests in this standalone thriller he has looked to the past history of the British Intelligence Service. It is 1953. Harry Tower has been a talented British SIS officer for many years. So talented that he’s trusted by Winston Churchill.

Bernard Samson is a spy on the run. But in the murky streets of Berlin, he knows where to hide. Wanted for an act of treachery he has not committed, he must not only escape the grasp of London Central, but get to the bottom of a tangled conspiracy that is about to change everything. World-weary agent Bernard Samson is losing control of his personal and professional life. Sent to Mexico to aid the defection of a KGB agent to the West, he has a chance to prove his worth. Instead he is torn between conflicting loyalties, and lost in a maze of double-dealing and duplicity. Nothing good ever comes from a midnight phone call, especially from Downing Street. For washed-up spy Harry Tower, it is the worst news at the worst possible time. His son, Sean, has gone missing in troubled Iran after writing an exposé about government corruption. Their relationship has never recovered since Harry's wife's suicide, for which Sean holds his father responsible. And Harry, with his career on the verge of disintegration, needs to find him and put things right. Riveting...with style and energy, evocative scene-setting and strong characterisation' Financial TimesTom Bradby's cold war thriller features a British spy called Harry Tower, who dashes to Iran in search of his son Sean, a journalist who has gone missing. The tale is set mostly in 1953 at the time of an Iranian coup d'état, in which the British and American governments were attempting to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh (who was left leaning) in favour of the Shah. [They were of course successful and the Shah ruled as absolute monarch with American support until 1979 when he was deposed in the Islamic revolution]. I read this shortly after reading the highly acclaimed John Le Carre novel "Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy" and it took me a while for me to separate this book from that one, particularly the main character Harry Tower who would fit right in the Le Carre novel. I liked this much better than Tinker, Tailor, Solider Spy. I am a big fan of smart espionage, which also makes me a big fan of Tom Bradby. His latest stand-alone outing, “Yesterday's Spy”, provides plenty of action while exposing the moral ambiguities of what we do for king and country. Do you believe in God?’ Julie asked. ‘No. But I’m old enough to recognize that we simply have no idea what lies beyond the boundaries of our knowledge and to take some comfort from that ignorance.” Though it wasn’t my favourite Tom Bradby thriller because of my disconnect with the characters, it was nevertheless fast paced at times, (particularly towards the end), and I still enjoyed it.

I certainly felt that Tom Bradby had undertaken considerable research into the politics of the period including the 1953 Iranian coup. Tom Bradby writes good and believable characters but his locations and settings are what marks out his stories. Yesterday’s Spy opens in a bierkeller in Gottingen, Germany in 1933. Young Cambridge student Amanda James gets on the wrong side of a drunken and bellicose Nazi gang toasting the glories of new Reich. If not for the intervention of fellow Brit Harry Tower things could get very nasty for Amanda. Curiously, the whole time the conflict is happening Harry has the feeling a man is watching him, assessing his actions. In the coming years, Harry marries Amanda, they have a son, Sean, and Harry begins working for SIS. Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.We meet our spy, Harry, as he finds out his son has gone missing in Tehran, but what was he really doing there…Harry makes it his mission to find out with adventures and personal introspective along the way ( re his past )

The emerging story of the forces behind the coup, including both British and Americans as well as senior figures in the Iranian police and army. A high-ranking scientist has been kidnapped. A secret British intelligence agency must find out why. But as the quarry is pursued from grimy Soho to the other side of the world, what seemed a straightforward mission turns into something far more sinister. As is typical of spy novels that incorporate a mole, the reader is asked to guess the mole’s identity. I guessed wrong, so Bradby scored a point for his surprising reveal. The ending is not only surprising, it is redemptive and satisfying. This I enjoyed but was very different to the trilogy, the historical information is amazing and anyone with an interest in Iranian local and world politics in the 1950’s will find it a must

Len Deighton books in order:

Texan billionaire General Midwinter will stop at nothing to bring down the USSR – even if it puts the whole world at risk. In my youth I looked for answers with a terrible urgency. I craved certainty. Then I started telling myself that, in the end, we have to accept there’s a vast amount we just don’t know.” This is a love story because it’s about Harry and Amanda and Sean and Shahnaz. Amanda committed suicide and Bradby blends her story into the relationship between father and son very skilfully. Can Harry not only find Sean but reconcile with him about the family’s past? Both this and the spy story work. Thank you to the author, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Mr. Bradby is equally adept at weaving the political history of the time into his story, including an explanation of how important Iranian oil was to the U.S. and Britain, and why, as well as the attitudes those nations held and the actions they undertook that made them so unpopular with certain segments of Iranian society. Those interested in the history of the Shah’s return to power (setting the stage for his ouster a quarter of a century later) may find “Yesterday’s Spy” particularly illuminating.

I am grateful to the author and Grove Atlantic for granting me access to an ARC in return for an honest review. As a fan of Mr. Bradby's earlier Kate Henderson series, I was disappointed by this story. I knew little about the 50s politics in the Middle East, particularly Iran, so the plot was new to me. It made for a good potential story of the cold war in a different venue. That potential was not realized, with much more of a focus on James Bond-esque action with little character development. I was used to Mr. Bradby's use of moral ambivalence in his previous novels, but this story did not build on its premise. Harry’s son Sean is a journalist. Sean blames Harry for his mother’s suicide. Harry’s wife suffered from bouts of severe depression and, rather than being there when she cycled into a dark phase, Harry was off saving the world. Harry returned from an assignment and found Sean holding his mother’s body after cutting her from the rope she used to hang herself. Harry understandably blames himself but wishes he could do more for Sean, who wants nothing that Harry tries to give him. Or perhaps you might want to indulge your inner secret agent with Deighton’s Bernard Sampson novels? A trilogy of trilogies set in 1980s England featuring secret agent Sampson and his wife Fiona, this exceptional series cemented Deighton as one of the top spy novelists of his time. A fast-paced spy thriller located mostly in Iran. The story is set at the time of the coup in 1953. This is an exciting read with lots of adrenaline-filled action with plenty of twists and surprises. The characters are well-drawn and whilst not necessarily likeable, are very credible. It was fascinating to learn about the history of Iran. On August 19, 1953, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d’etat jointly planned by the United States and Great Britain and led on the ground by the CIA. With the support of the country’s leading mullah, Abol-Ghasem Kashani, Americans under the command of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. restored Mohammad Shah Reza Pahlavi as Iran’s supreme leader. The shah’s brutal, dictatorial regime during the following two decades led directly to the 1979 Iranian Revolution that still echoes in today’s headlines. Now, British journalist Tom Bradby recalls the events of 1953 in Yesterday’s Spy, a fast-paced spy thriller loosely based on the history of the coup.Twenty years later. Harry is now a fading star in the SIS firmament. He is called to Downing Street because of his expertise in Iran. Harry has served in Tehran and his son, Sean, is still there. Churchill is about to approve British involvement in Operation Ajax, a plan in conjunction with the Americans to oust Iran’s legitimate and popular nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Tom Bradby’s “Yesterday’s Spy” is a very well-written spy novel set in 1953 Iran. Part historical novel, part thriller, part mystery, and part espionage tale, it is also a novel of interesting characters playing “the great game” for very high stakes. A sunken U-Boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War – until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. Long-suffering spy Bernard Samson has, against all the odds, enticed a Soviet agent to defect to London – but this proves to be the start of something even bigger. For he learns that there is treachery within his own Service, and no one is free from suspicion. To discover who really controls the game of spies, he must attempt a desperate gamble.