Book Review of Icarus 17 by Charles Cumming

 

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(This fair review is based on a review copy from the publisher)

 

A compelling thriller about an Anglo-American intelligence agency at the fag-end of the Special Relationship, highlighting the dangers of the digital-everything culture.

The action starts in Sweden (whose intelligence-sharing agreement with the UK actually predates the Special Relationship and the “Five Eyes”). A gunman travels by riverboat to a borough some distance from central Stockholm and starts to shoot people, apparently at random but right outside the house overlooking a public park which is where the wife and daughter of the chief of “BOX 88” live. The chief, Lachlan Kite, is in London and he hears about the shootings as he’s meeting an old flame, whose son has gone missing in Athens. He is torn between several duties and loyalties, but leaves the safety of his own family in the (perfectly competent) hands of the Swedish authorities and gets sucked into rescuing somebody else’s family. Only, the old flame hasn’t told him everything he needs to know about that.

The young man who has gone missing is in love with a young woman of part-Arab descent, who takes most of the book to get around to telling the young man everything he needs to know about herself and the dangers facing them. And she knows only half the story in any case. There’s an attempt to kidnap the girl resulting in the young man being beaten up, and the pair go on the run, the young man quickly learning that it’s nearly impossible to do this in any country within the Schengen “free movement” area where all movements are closely monitored and controlled, including by AI biometric recognition of individuals appearing on any CCTV footage from almost any source, as well as people being identified and located when they appear in the background of selfies and scenic images taken and shared by others with completely benign intentions. They can be tracked by bank cards and smart phones, by passports which they need to check into hotels with or use air travel. And although all this tracking and monitoring infrastructure has been constructed for the purposes of the states in question, it is not only open to abuse by non-state actors: the non-state actors are frequently more skilled and more prolific in their exploitation of the surveillance state than the “proper authorities.”

The intensity of the dangers they face, coupled with their own limited resources (they have cash, they lack good ID) drive the young woman and the young man to run away from “civilisation” as far as is possible by surface transport within Greece and, pending the emergence of an actual plan and firm destination they survive mainly by being too terrified to do much except keep going, but they have a very near miss and they learn that their only source of fresh ID has fled Greece for Sarajevo for his own safety. They decide to travel, on the documents they have, across the Balkans and, fatally, find that non Schengen Area states are less dangerous, so they stop moving for a bit. Things get very frightening, very quickly and the climax is dramatic.

The story namechecks several American presidents in a positive way, but Trump is portrayed as a destroyer, not just of American public (and secret) services but also of America, and it transpires that US Citizens who can’t swiftly prove their identity get turned away from American Embassies. That makes for a very bleak atmosphere, but one which gets more credible with every day’s headlines from the real world. Indeed, the only thing which stops this novel being the first of a new genre of Blairtopian thrillers is that the world’s most passionate cheerleader for the surveillance tech and surveillance state portrayed in it, is never mentioned once, though his shadow falls across every page.

 

Icarus 17 by Charles Cumming is published on the 2^nd of July 2026 by HarperCollins UK/ Hemlock Press

Book review of Venus, Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell

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(Review based on a review copy from the publisher.)

 

A timely historical novel about the culture war waged in Germany before the Holocaust, which is also a deep and loving portrait of a self-invented young female artist making an impact in the most difficult and dangerous of circumstances. It is timely because it is published as Tech Oligarchs seek equivalent control over the arts as the NASDAP once did and the mechanism of control, deliberate impoverishment of the talented, is very similar in nature but further-reaching than Goebbels could ever have dreamed of.

It is apparent that whilst the accusation against the Jews is that they prosper, unduly, at the expense of the German people, it is the creative talent of the Jews which the new masters of Germany envy and fear in equal measure. The heroine, Hannah, a seamstress from a family entirely engaged in the garment business, who likes to draw, leaves home and starts out on her own, becomes interested in fine art, attracts the attention of an expert who mentors, but does not really teach her as she becomes a painter. None of the Jews in the story are hugely wealthy and only one family is even prosperous, but an Aryan female patron who funds and exploits Hannah in equal measure is indeed hugely wealthy and has several other wealthy Aryan female friends. They do not start out as obvious fascists and for several years Germany remains a democratic republic. But once there is a new Chancellor (who is not named until well towards the end of the novel) the wealthy swiftly and overtly side with the newly powerful and make themselves believe in the new doctrines, heart and soul.

Hannah gets paid lots of money to paint nudes of her wealthy patron and her friends and gives pretty well all of it away. Her art becomes both a target of the culture war and a weapon in it, used by both sides! She is betrayed by her patron and betrays her patron back, but it is the patron who rescues Hannah from imminent arrest and gets her out of Germany. The divisions are deep, but also complicated and ambiguous.

The principal difference between the culture war in the novel and that in the real world in the present day is that the historical German Chancellor passed surprise edicts and even enacted complicated legislation to deprive his victims of their rights, their jobs, their goods and their homes. The relevant quote from the present day Oligarchs is “Tech is how we by-pass the constitution” (so no need for laws at all!) and they are not just targeting an ethnic minority, or even a disenfranchised ethnic majority, or the creatives within them. All creative effort is being stripped of reward and the costs of carrying out creative activities for one’s own expression steadily ramp up. Every non-Oligarch is being steadily impoverished and the thought of what that might be preparation for makes one wonder if this novel is prophetic as well as historical?

Venus, Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell is published by Pan Macmillan/Picador on the 16^th of July 2026.