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Inside Enemy takes up shortly after the end of the previous novel, Uncommon Enemy. Charles has been brought back from retirement and appointed as C, the head of MI6. The service is in a bad way, not least because the previous C was a traitor. MI6’s security routines have become a shambles and, to the horror of all concerned, its head office has been moved to Croydon.
Matters rapidly go from bad to worse with a series of apparently unrelated incidents. A former KGB officer is murdered in Sussex. A nuclear submarine goes missing. A traitor escapes from prison. Hackers are mounting a series of brief but destabilising raids on Britain’s ‘Critical National Infrastructure’, causing governments departments to go off-line and banks to withhold payments. The indications are that the hackers are gaining access to these closely guarded networks via a computer at MI6.
On the surface, nothing connects these with Charles’s wife, Sarah, or with an MP who resembles a chess-playing Mr Toad. But the MP’s glamorous secretary is keen to introduce a Russian oligarch friend to Sarah, and his neighbours included the former KGB officer.
This is undoubtedly Judd’s best spy novel yet — both as a thriller and in terms of its plot construction. The narrative starts with a contract killing but then builds with deceptive calm via the deliberations of mandarins and lengthy, but relevant flashbacks to a dramatic conclusion. Whatever the crisis he faces, Charles remains unflappable, his steely integrity intact. When in doubt pack the Winchester 30-30.
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