Is it possible to have a cozy spy novel? One wouldn’t think so, considering what usually happens in these stories: sneaking around, duplicitous people on both sides, and shadowy strangers who might be a friend or a killer. Yet William Boyd’s “The Predicament,” the continuing saga of the press-ganged spy for MI6, manages it exceptionally well.
Set in the early 1960s, during the height of the Cold War, the series follows a successful, likable, and somewhat clueless British travel writer named Gabriel Dax. In the first novel, “Gabriel’s Moon,” his quiet literary life gets upended when he becomes irrevocably entangled in MI6 operations.
