The author returned to the world of espionage last year with Gabriel’s Moon ... Gabriel’s Moon got off to an explosive start. The Predicament is less immediately engaging; it suffers from a low-key opening and a bland title. The reader’s patience pays off, however: Soon the plot becomes more intricate and the intrigues become truly threatening ... Mr. Boyd’s depiction of the spy world is impressive in its details ... Gabriel could have come across as a mere cipher in this environment, a faceless spook navigating smoke and mirrors. Instead, Mr. Boyd has made him a rich character with a troubling personal history and a complex emotional life.
Like his character, Boyd is much more at home in the genre than in the previous outing, and this John Le Carré-esque Cold War thriller is something rare—a sequel that surpasses the original. Full of wry humor, this is a compelling novel full of intrigue, romance, and, once again, plenty of alcohol.
Though Boyd giggles atop a successful oeuvre, The Predicament works hard so as to be read as an isolated new entity whilst smothering us all with the genre’s regular archetypes ... Judged aside from its subject matter, The Predicament bobs afloat some gainfully readable prose ... Despite the stylistic clangers and the unbelievable way in which a flimsy litterateur is said to suddenly outdo the CIA, The Predicament will definitely have both Boyd’s faithful clientele and more casual readers of his output speeding - mouth agape - to its tense conclusion.
The novel breezes along, with Gabriel making like James Bond, until an anticlimactic epilogue dated November 22, 1963, implies that events in Berlin explain what happened in Dallas. Few literary novelists are as comfortable with espionage tropes as Boyd, who uses the genre as a platform for another of his comically flawed, self-delusional protagonists ... A thriller that's always in motion but, unlike its hero, always knows where it's going.
