Making Brexit thrilling

The long gestation period of Brexit has allowed authors to plan and write and publish novels in time for the big day. Alan Judd’s Accidental Agent (Simon & Schuster, £12.99) is a spy thriller set during the EU negotiations. Charles Thoroughgood is the head of MI6. The secret service is forbidden from spying on the EU, but when an EU official volunteers information about the negotiations, it seems too good an opportunity to miss. The trouble is, the mole — known only by the code name Timber Wolf — might not actually be real.

Thoroughgood investigates the veracity of the source, taking the place of Timber Wolf’s usual contact, and what he discovers unsettles and surprises him. Another strand of this intriguing book involves a possible terrorist hiding in plain sight. A close friend of Thoroughgood’s has married into a Muslim family. This friend has the passion of the recently converted, but could this signal a move towards extreme behaviour? On every side the shifting sands of identity both entice and threaten. The novel very cleverly manages to exist within the Brexit process: whatever happens on that score, this story will still work, and still have human relevance.

In The Friends of Harry Perkins (Scribner, £12), Chris Mullin takes a very different approach to the same situation. Set some years after Brexit, it deals with the Labour party’s attempts to regain power in a Britain that trundles on, a little more isolated, a lot more unruly. This is a belated follow-up to A Very British Coup, which featured the Labour MP Harry Perkins as its hero. Now the ‘friends’ of Harry promote one of their number, Fred Thompson, as a new leader of the party for a new age.