Red Corona
The core of the story is the quotidian relevance of the humble radio wave and how our every move can be watched via satellite, CCTV, and compliant or indeed remote use of the portable camera into which you’re currently smiling. As Mr Glister writes, “the power to spy on anyone, anywhere, any time… if we’re lucky it’ll be a friendly face watching over us… but what if it isn’t?”
Sixty years ago, the first rough cobblestones were being laid for what is today’s stellar info-highway. This debut novel, although pertinent, isn’t about the space race and first man to the moon as such, but rather the painstaking pioneering work bravely undertaken prior to that by physicists striving to solve the problems of earth to space communication – but don’t fret, the important technical information is clearly imparted. Intrigue, thrills, fights and killings occur in the race to cross that line first, and cracking drama it is with well-observed MI5, CIA and KGB characters in realistic settings surrounded by many authentic contemporary touches, particularly in the small visual details of 1960 London’s Soho street- and night-life (with gentle nods to the then-illegal gay scene), or the desperate bleakness of the Russian-Finnish borderlands or the leafiness and popularity of Stockholm’s central public park; all this so naturally written that you’re actually there also.
The well-paced short-chaptered narrative presents cinematic-style scenes as we follow the half dozen main characters, each with interesting and plausible back-stories, each attempting to thwart the others to establish their own “secure global communications network”. I was reminded of Frederick Forsyth’s Day of the Jackal with its similarly relentless motivations. A great read.
