“Spy Dragon” by John Fullerton is a novel of espionage that fans of John Le Carre, Robert Ludlum, and Daniel Silva may well enjoy.

Richard Brodick is a British intelligence officer disenchanted with his country but still wanting to rise to the top of his profession. Beautiful Chinese intelligence officer codenamed “Fang” wants to use that ambition to turn Brodick into a Chinese asset. Brodick is equally determined to turn “Fang” into a British asset. Just who will turn whom? And will love stand in the way of these two "outsiders" obtaining what their governments and ambitions require? Those are the questions that kept me turning the pages.

Author John Fullerton is a former British Intelligence “contract laborer” and also a newspaper journalist and editor for many years. He brings that experience to bear in this very well-written novel. Set against the backdrop of the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s, “Spy Dragon” depicts not only what life was like in Beirut at the time (explosive, to put it mildly), it imparts a good amount of history about Lebanon and the communists’ rise to power in China; as well as the tradecraft and tactical thinking employed by intelligence officers.

I enjoyed the characters. I did not like them very much—because they’re not very likable, much less admirable—but I did enjoy them. There was depth to them and more than a little ambiguity.

There are scenes of sex and violence, but I didn’t find them graphic, or prurient, or gratuitous. Rather, they are devices that help drive the plot. Mr. Fullerton concentrates more on the effects of their having happened than he does on how they happen.

I did think that “Spy Dragon” began slowly. It took me a while to engage with the plot and characters. And there were times the novel seemed to lose focus, times I wasn’t really sure what the stakes were, either for the characters or the governments they represented. (Then again, this is the second novel in a series. I had not read the first and perhaps that’s a contributing factor)

Nevertheless, it’s a novel I enjoyed by an author whose work I would like to read again.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with an e-book in exchange for an honest, independent review.

What a very well written Spy Dragon is and a pleasure to read. The second book in the Brodick Cold War Spy Thriller Series is about British spy Richard being dispatched to Beirut in the middle of the civil war.

Of course, he becomes involved with a mysterious Chinese operative and he must wonder if she can be trusted?

An exciting thriller with very well-crafted characters made this novel a favorite.





Spy Dragon is the second in the Brodick Cold War Spy Thriller series, the follow-up to the bestselling Spy Game