"The Ambassador" by Tom Fletcher

An audio book.

A prologue introduces many people -

• Ed Barnes, the UK's ambassador in France. His wife, Lady Emma, works in a bookshop - Hemingway and Co. Their's wasn't a love which began with hot passion. It's fading. Ed thinks she might be having an affair with a bookshop worker.
• General Max Crawford (embassy security)
• Lynn Redwood - foreign secretary. Ed and her had an affair.
• Orelee - Algierian-born lawyer, nicknamed "sparrow"
• Lenny Goddard - butler. He's been there 20 years. Caribbean
• Aula Fitzgerald - Le Monde reporter
• Amena Joshee - an Indian who's become an embassy resident. She'll die in an hour

A week before, Magnus Pederson meets a fat Russian, Chirkin. Pederson has lots of compromising info on public figures, including Ed Barnes. More people are introduced -

• Sophie Rawlings - a new speechwriter
• Alem - Brown's deputy, a woman married to a woman.

It's post-Covid - life has changed. Amena, a friend of Emma at Oxford, criticises governments online. When she asked for asylum at the embassy, it couldn't be refused. While Ed gives a speech, her throat is cut. A camera's been installed in herroom. The French police arrive. Ed soon sends them away. He's worried about the safety of his daughter, Steph. Pederson leaks his info about several people - their browser histories, etc. Spies, prospective US governors, etc are exposed, leading to suicides and wrecked careers.

Ed wants to run the investigation - something at last that he can be committed to. And it might impress his wife. He doesn't think it was a suicide (people say that Alema had a martyr complex). He wants to know if there's a connection between Danish Anarchist Pederson and Amena. The Dissenters tell people to protest outside UK embassies. One of them sets himself alight. There are other suicides. Ed sees that the bloodied knife at the death scene has been swapped.

He's told he has to go to London. There he’s dismissed by his boss. His wife uses the opportunity to move in with her lover. Ed goes to Oxford to follow a lead. He discovers that Taythan is researching into sentiment analysis. He finds Aula there, following the same lead. She receives a death threat. She’d been in close touch with Pederson and Amena. Amena had planned suicide and Aula was supposed to report her last words to spur the campaign. But something went wrong. Maybe Lenny had been Amena’s messenger. Did Pederson think that Aula had tried to talk Amena out of suicide? The 2 of them go to Wales to hide out in his cottage. In the dark, someone lurks outside. Max Crawford appears, saying he’s killed someone (American, he thinks) and wants Ed to help him bury the body.

They decide that the cottage isn’t safe. Ed goes to Copenhagen to find Pederson. He turns up armed to Pederson's warehouse HQ and find him. It's so easy he assumes he's expected. He and Pederson debate the future of civilisation. Pederson is about to release more secrets. Pederson tells him that Aula did indeed fail to follow plans, and Lenny had been helpful. Crawford was working for the Americans. Pederson says that there was another helper within the embassy. Pederson's about to show Ed Amena's final video when the warehouse is raided. Pederson's killed. Ed survives. The warehouse is blown up by a US missile that the president announces as a strike for freedom.

He goes to Lebanon to meet Russians - they have a video of Amena's last minutes. Negotiations fail, but he learns from Aula why Pederson hated him - Steff was the only woman he ever loved. Were Taythan and Emena working together? Did the Americans consider them a threat?

He returns to Paris. He learns that the next set of leaks will reveal that Lynn had had an abortion (his child). Crawford and Aula have disappeared. He fears that Lenny is in danger, knowing too much. He finds out that Aula and his wife were much closer friends than he thought. He talks to his daughter, who tells him that she was there at the end. Lenny is found dead - looks like suicide.

He understands why Taythan's work is useful - predicting people's wants is a useful tool of control. He's still puzzled about why Crawford saved them, and why the knife was swapped.

Steff had told Crawford to protect him from news about her that might upset Ed. He tried to destroy the evidence etc. He died in the Copenhagen bombing?

In the epilogue, months later, we learn how the cast of characters have fared. Taythan is on a super-yacht. Ed and Steff are living in a big house in England. Emma is living with a new (female?) partner.

I assumed that Steff was involved, though Ed didn't consider it. When he did find out, he wasn't very shocked. Nor was he stunned to learn that his wife had dreamed of raising a family with Amena. And Steff talks calmly about how she assisted Amena's death.

I like the diplomatic chit-chat -

• "master of the weaponised anecdote"
• "I think you're a rebel, but you don't yet know what you're rebelling about"