We were thrilled to catch up with Goldsboro Crime Collective author, David Goodman, ahead of publication day of his debut spy thriller "A Reluctant Spy" to further discuss some of the crucial themes of the novel. Read below to hear how the themes of personal possibility and sacrifice relates to the novel.
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When I was writing ‘A Reluctant Spy’, I didn’t give a great deal of thought to themes, or whether I had anything I really wanted to say. I’m sure some writers start with the point they want to make and build their story around it, but that’s never been how I work. Instead, the themes of a story or novel usually only become apparent to me afterwards, when I read and re-read the book during editing.
You’ll soon get to meet Jamie Tulloch, the protagonist of my novel. I’m always at pains to point out that I’m not Jamie, but I do have a lot in common with him. I’ve felt awkward and out of place. I’ve wondered if my choices in the past have permanently closed off possibilities for the future. And I’ve questioned whether the sacrifices I’ve made in pursuit of my goals were, ultimately, worth it.
The more I looked at my own novel, the more I saw other characters doing the same balancing act of possibility, choices and sacrifices. Nearly everyone in ‘A Reluctant Spy’ (and indeed in real life) has made a life-altering choice at one point or another. And all of them are wondering whether it was worth it, and what might come next.
I believe we all start life with a very broad ‘possibility cone’ extending out in front of us, largely only constrained by where we’re born and the circumstances we come from. But that cone can get wider or a great deal narrower. Sometimes the widening or narrowing is down to decisions others make for us – our parents, teachers, bosses, partners. But the older we get, the more those decisions are down to us. And there’s no way to know, for most of those decisions, whether we’re making the right one. Or what external demands and factors might make our choice the wrong one in the future.
In ‘A Reluctant Spy’, Jamie makes a choice early in his life, based on what he knows about himself as a 23-year-old man. He agrees to become a ‘Legend’, part of an MI6 programme to create unassailable, fully formed cover stories from the lives of real people. In exchange for agreeing to loan his identity to a doppelgänger covert agent at an unspecified point in the future, he gets the access, influence and quiet support that he sorely lacks. A safety net, in return for living a very constricted and limited life.
For Jamie, his possibility cone narrows down to a sterile, unfulfilling existence. He trades possibility for stability. It’s an enormous sacrifice that he thinks is worth it at 23, but which he’s having serious second thoughts about by the time of the novel.
I think it’s pretty common, to feel like your possibilities are slowly constricting as you get older. Education choices, career choices, starting a family, buying a house, taking on care responsibilities for ageing relatives – all of these things can feel like they’re removing options and paths for the future. What is a mid-life crisis except a reaction to that feeling of slowly tightening inevitability?
However, unlike poor Jamie, most of us haven’t signed our lives away to the Secret Intelligence Service. Change is as inevitable as ageing, and not all change is predictable or even the stereotypical buying of sports cars in your fifties. Your cone of possibilities can get wider.
For example, I believed for a long time that the book you’re about to read might never happen. I’ve been writing since my teens, but for a very, very long time it was a vague aspiration more than a focused goal. I spent much of that time trying to work out if there was some kind of shortcut or trick or thing I hadn’t figured out yet that would get me where I wanted to go. Part of actually getting here was realising that, no, there isn’t really a shortcut. You have to write a lot and figure out how to become a competent storyteller.
That did require sacrifice. A lot of very early mornings. A lot of teaching myself new skills and practicing them, over and over. About nine previous draft novels and several dozen short stories. At times, I wondered if I was making the right choice. Was the lack of sleep and hours of typing worth it? Was I kidding myself? Would publishing a novel be anything like what I imagined? Were the stories I had to tell worth the blood, sweat and tears required to tell them?
Many of the characters in ‘A Reluctant Spy’ ask themselves the same sort of questions. There’s Jamie, of course, wondering whether the shadowy half-life he’s leading is worth the stability it’s given him. And Nicola, an SIS handler juggling a crumbling private life with the demands of field work. And also Jeremy, the founder of the Legends Programme, who feels like a prisoner of his own brainchild and wonders if he should even be offering this devil’s bargain in the first place.
Beyond the core characters, there are antagonists asking uncomfortable questions. Are the sacrifices made by any of the intelligence officers worth it, when they look at who and what they’re being asked to defend? And if people die, on either side of the conflict in my book, who decides whether that loss was worth the cost?
I’m lucky – I know for sure now that the work I’ve done and the choices I’ve made were worth it. You’re holding the evidence in your hands, a beautiful special edition from the amazing curators of reading at Goldsboro Books. And, as members of the Crime Collective, you’ll get to enjoy the results of many others fantastic authors who have made the same kinds of choices and achieved their own dreams.
If there’s anything I hope this book reminds you of, though, it’s that the narrowness of the choices in front of you is nearly always a bit of an illusion. You can do more than you think, and the future may well be far brighter than you imagine.
