Read for you / Russian spies, Elysian advisers and the DGSE
After Panic in Cotonou published in 2014, Putsch in Libreville in 2015 and The Revenge of Aïcha Gadhafi in 2018, here is the fourth issue of Jimmy Boris’ investigations, the spy series of Mouftaou Badarou. The Russian secret services are conspiring against the French state in this thriller.
The infiltration of a presidential palace by a foreign secret service is always a serious threat to a country. But more than usual in this novel: the rumor of the corruption of an advisor of President Macron by the Russian SVR is confirmed by e-mails intercepted by the French secret services. The DGSE charges Agent Jimmy Boris with an investigation as hectic as it is perilous, aimed at unmasking the corrupt mole whispering in the ear of the French head of state. The narrative thus moves from a political machination towards the identification of the conspirators. But who is the SVR spook who pulls the strings in Paris? Very quickly, the finger of suspicion is pointed at Vladimir Orlov, military attaché at the Russian embassy in Paris.
The author catches the attention of the reader from the prologue and maintains this interest without weakening until the last page, proceeding for this by short chapters, as to create at times a panting atmosphere. The violence here is however episodic, it does not break out at all pages, even if this novel also sheds a raw light on the darkest practices of the secret services.
Before we go any further, I would like to make a comment about the hero, Jimmy Boris, an agent of the DGSE. It is a pure aesthete, having a pronounced taste for fashion, smelling good, always well-styled and in love with his fiancée, Eva Randet, a young Franco-Malagasy mixed race.
Another aesthete in the novel is an ex-DGSE named Thimoléon Lafarge. He shares the privilege (with the Head of Action and Constable Jimmy Boris) of conducting the investigation. Appearing for the first time in The Vengeance of Aïcha Gadhafi, the third issue of the series, the author describes it here in «aesthete, with manners of gentleman, speaking as fluently English as Spanish, and always dressed as a Congolese dandy».
The rezident of the SVR in Paris (which gives the DGSE a hard time), is stuck in solitary barbouze and divorced old. Behind the museophilia and the gourmet, a lover of caviar, hides a formidable barbouze with expeditious methods. And the author of attaching us to the steps of this man to the stature of Boris Yeltsin and to the cynicism of Vladimir Putin, who makes eliminate one by one the troublesome witnesses of the conspiracy. We stop there. Because, to say more would spoil your pleasure to discover the novel. The fact remains that the author has announced the number five in his espionage series for next year. We are already buzzing about it.
A mole at the Élysée, ed. Licht, May 2022, 202 pages.
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