Reviewed by Harriet
Ava Glass has been proclaimed as the new queen of spy fiction. I’m not in a position to judge this, as The Trap is the first of her three Emma Makepeace spy novels I’ve read. But it’s certainly refreshing to read a novel about an attractive and extremely capable young woman holding her own in a dangerous world where deception rules and death is never far away.
‘Nothing about Emma Makepeace is real. Not even her name’, says the blurb for the first novel in the series. The same can almost be said about Glass, at least in relation to her name, though she makes no secret of her real name, Christi Daugherty. Glass, which I’ll continue to call her here, has used a number of pseudonyms on the various novels she has published over the past twelve years, encompassing YA, romance, crime and fantasy. But in 2019 she had the idea for the ‘Alias Emma’ series, apparently partly sparked by a period she spent working in the civil service alongside spies, including an attractive young woman who Glass was astonished to find working in such a profession.
Emma herself is young and attractive, but she’s also extremely good at her job. In The Trap, she has been sent to Edinburgh, a city just preparing for the global G7 Summit. Her team has acquired information about the planned assassination of one of the world leaders who will be attending, but they don’t know which one. What they do know is that it’s the Russians who are planning this, and that Nick Orlov, a Russian born UK resident and wealthy entrepreneur, is involved in some way. Clearly someone needs to find out more about Orlov, and the obvious person is Emma. Her special qualification is of course her youth and her looks. Yes, Emma is being set up as a honey trap.
Understandably, Emma has serious qualms about taking this on. Meeting Orlov and getting him to be interested enough to ask her on a date is not a problem, but she’s well aware that the relationship is likely to escalate and she must be prepared to go all the way if she has to. She’s been assigned a partner to work with, Edinburgh policewoman Kate Mackenzie, so the two can go together, dressed to the nines, to the bar where Emma will encounter Orlov, and Kate can keep guard in the hotel when Emma is on her own with the target. At first the two women are rather suspicious and resentful of each other, but they soon come to respect and like each other. Together they will go through some terrifying and dangerous adventures, and Emma will be put to the test as never before.
Glass’s two earlier Emma novels have been highly praised in the press and by writers including Anthony Horowitz and James Patterson. The first novel was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger, and the second was a Richard and Judy choice. Television adaptations are in the wind, and clearly Glass will continue to go from strength to strength. I really respect her desire to create what has been called a ‘female James Bond’ to counteract the often disturbingly male domination of the genre.
Harriet is a co-founder and one of the editors of Shiny New Books.
Ava Glass, The Trap (Penguin, 2024). 978-1804947609, 416pp., paperback original.
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This one had the best plot of the three, and showed a more vulnerable side to Emma. Loved it