Hutchinson has long experience with writing short stories, and this novel is built up in a way where every chapter is constructed as a short story, finding Rudi at a new city again and having a new adventure.īefore long, the story starts making erratic jumps as it is tiptoeing around a central mystery. I’m overjoyed to feel so gripped by his writing. In fact, I cannot find any fault in it and I am thoroughly impressed with his characters, the pacing of the story and sudden twists, the realism of his environments, his humane observations and gentle wit. Hutchinson’s writing style is crisp and elegant. When borders rise up and close down, the very human impulse to travel and mingle with others fuels the Coureur network. When even individual towns, pop-culture fan groups or football hooligans declare their own nation-states, red tape and bureaucracy has mushroomed into an epidemic. The continent has fractured into hundreds of small nations, with new ones popping up overnight. Rudi learns on the job, is often double-crossed while he sinks deeper and deeper into the Coureur network.Īnd jumping borders has become a profession in this near future Europe. The Coureurs have their own spy jargon and their work is laced with intrigue and paranoia. He is recruited step by step into the shadowy organization Les Coureurs des Bios, a spy network specialized in jumping borders for errands and messages.

Rudi is an Estonian, working and wandering all over Europe, mostly working in kitchens. He has written a book full of intelligence and passion: passion for spy stories, for Europe, for sharp characters and for writing in general. Hutchinson is intelligent enough a writer to be very aware of the clichés that all this invokes. He loves talking about Hungarians and Swiss and Poles and Estonians, doing sneaky business in dark alleys of Central European cities. He probably also loves classical spy novels, such as those by John le Carré. He probably even sees romance in the rusting Polish industrial wastelands. He loves the European rail network, that brings you everywhere on the continent within a few days, and the cosmopolitan feeling of it. I’d say he loves the deep, rich, sluggish history of Europe with all its strife and the long memories of struggle between cities and peoples memories that still have an impact today. He loves all those small Eastern European countries and all the various ethnic groups that brush shoulders there. I am going out on a limb and say that Dave Hutchinson loves Europe. Similar novels: China Mieville’s The City and The City.

Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson