Carefree Secret Agent Harry Boone thought he was taking it easy. But their leader, Archie Briggs, decided otherwise. He sends it to Granada, Spain. damn How to sell this new assignment without risking a divorce from his delicious wife Maria, whose ability to transform into a dragon is enough to push back Putin’s army?
But Harry is smart. like its author. To catch the reader off guard, to lead him down the wrong path, a shared know-how. Naturally, one is the creation of the other. So let’s start with this story of a five-century-old Aleppo manuscript that would reveal the location of a mirror that kept the Prophet’s reflection while, in principle, it is forbidden to reproduce it in any way. True or false, the enigma is attractive enough for Maria to convince her to move to Granada and thus devote herself to this treasure hunt, with the passion that characterizes her, in the alleys of the Alhambra.
Percy Kemp forces the reader to reflect on these new addictions
Harry sighs in relief. He won the first round. But Briggs brings him back to the harsh reality of his life as a spy. The repeated attacks against underwater telecommunications lines deserve to rouse this idle agent from his Spanish lethargy. We are in the midst of Covid, people are confined at home and only communicate via the internet. In all its forms. The shock is violent, unprecedented. No one on the line. radio silence So how does it survive without the Five Sisters, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft? Harry Boone agrees to move, seeing in this maneuver the possibility of not returning to England.
Percy Kemp’s thriller is very cerebral. No fat arms or explosive cinematic scenes where everyone would be tempted to recognize a raging Rambo, a Jake LaMotta or even a legendary Dirty Harry. No, here, we confuse our adversary but with words, we reason with concepts. Without Guantánamo methods, no waterboarding. How was it possible to paralyze the giants of Big Tech for weeks? To the point of dragging the entire world addicted to the Big Five to an abyssal precipice and scaring the governments thus taken by surprise.
The man likes the verb, and the verb is good for him. With small touches and great subtlety, Percy Kemp forces the reader to reflect on these new dependencies, double-edged progress. And let us know about it great game so loved by Kipling, digital version of the Cold War. In other words, a real nightmare.
The Five Sisters by Percy Kemp, Éditions Le Seuil-Cadre Noir, 384 pages, 21 euros.
Source : Le JDD
