Hammer to Fall

British agent Joe Wilderness returns in "Lawton's ongoing recreation of Cold War chicanery . . . one of the great pleasures of modern spy fiction" (Mick Herron, award-winning author of the Slough House series). It's London, the swinging sixties, and by all rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, his postings are more grim than glamorous. In the wake of what became an embarrassing disaster for MI6 in a divided Berlin, Wilderness is reprimanded with a posting to remote northern Finland under the guise of a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad. Bored by his work, and with nothing to spy on, Wilderness strikes a deal with his old KGB pal Kostya to smuggle vodka into the USSR. But there is something fishy about why Kostya has suddenly turned up in Finland—and MI6 intelligence from London points to a connection with cobalt mining in the region, a critical component in the casing of the...