“Quantum of Menace” by Vaseem Khan. Espionage retires to the home counties. A pleasant whodunnit with a big themed background that ultimately serves its purpose with a final twist in the tale. The dogged persistence of Q in solving the murder keeps you involved, but whether this is more than a TV movie script, I am not so sure.
Authorised by the Ian Fleming estate, this is the first in the Q Mysteries series, with Major Boothroyd, our retired amateur investigator. He receives a cryptic note from an old friend who has died in mysterious circumstances.
He has a couple of unusual friends – a robot (called Miss Honeypenny) and a depressed dog (called ‘Bastard’). Neither adds anything to the story, which is a missed opportunity.
On one level, this is an accessible read. However, it lacks any real depth in the political world of spying or the background world of 007. There is no real backstory of Q beyond regular casual references and a cliched troubled family story. This led to a disconnect from the darker theme of Q in the 007 movies.
It has the writing style of a TV movie script. That is not unusual in the sense of it being a 007 spin-off. But it is not on the grand scale of 007. Based in a fictional home counties village of Wickstone-on-Water. It only ever takes a trip out to London. Whilst that works well with the plot, this is certainly not in the legacy of the 007 franchise. It has more of a Miss Marple about it. The constant references to 007 seem to be there just because this is a 007 casual spin-off, but little else until the end, when OO7 makes a slightly unconvincing cameo.
With its dry British humour it has a light touch to the novel but hat is not counter-balanced by what I expected would have been a more serious novel. That is not to take away the serious back story regarding his father and the main plot around the death of Pete. The problem is that it works more as an airport page turner than anything philosophical. But that is the problem – it is clever whodunnit but nothing underneath.
The lack of depth is odd. In this village is an HQ in which quantum computing could be used to create a program that can break codes, leading to wide open vulnerabilities in password-protected information and finance on the internet. Yet the story never really goes anywhere with this beyond a criminal gang.
The fact that Q has been let go of does not help. Q is no more – he is just a retired spy. Yet this is supposed to be a 007 spin-off. So why are we asked to call him “Q” when he is no longer just a retired civilian? This takes an awful lot away from what the story could have been, based on the secret service around his role.
Yet it could have been so much more. Khan could have built in more of the techno thriller aspect when he investigates the company. Instead of being a sharp “Slow Horses”, it feels more like a comfortable Thursday Murder Club.
