Gabriel’s Moon, the 19th novel from William Boyd, is an espionage story served with all the trimmings: a haunted hero, shady government agencies, deception, country-hopping, heavy drinking, chain-smoking, the Cold War, paranoia, and a femme fatale. It’s safe to say the wheel is not being reinvented here, but over the course of his career, William Boyd has proven himself a master at keeping readers turning the pages, and this new outing is no different.

After an opening scene set in the 1930s, involving a childhood tragedy and the eponymous moon, we leap forward to the swinging 60s, where Gabriel is now a freelance travel journalist who, through a mutual acquaintance, lands an interview with the Congo politician Patrice Lumumba. This interview marks the beginning of Gabriel’s entry into a dusty, duplicitous world in which the veneer of glamour is slowly wiped away to reveal the murky realities underneath.

The story zips along, but the trauma storyline never feels as important as it should, so what we are left with is an engaging, if conventional spy yarn. Readers familiar with the genre may be comforted that all the expected elements are in place, but the outcome feels, well, slightly too familiar.