
The novel has cultural pointers-a-plenty in amongst the espionage. Some are staples of an escapist spy story such as travelogue and style but music plays a key part.
Below I reveal the background of some of the tunes I selected to match the taste and listening of various characters and scenes within the novel.
For Shev, The GLIMMER Girl herself, it’s the urban cutting edge of Green Tea Peng’s Hu Man, and Sampa the Great’s Final Flow.

The Specials’ Gangsters for the scene in SIS Chief Admiral Dewhurst’s office.

It’s the Small Faces’ Tin Soldier and Bowie’s Wild is the Wind for veteran spy, St John Bradley.

Scenes such as Commander Smith-Cummings dash through a tempest at the novel’s prologue are represented by folk of Catherine Tickell and The Darkening.

Evocative pieces by Cara Dillon and Fay Hield embellish the novel’s Celtic folklore elements set in 1920s Ireland with Stick in the Wheel’s Villon Song representing the murderous Jonah Spirewick.


Modern Icelandic scenes are covered by A Man Called Adam’s Mountains and Waterfalls and the Easter egg inclusion of Terry Callier’s Lazarus Man…


Along with the epic (when isn’t she) and spy flick-esque Time Out of the World from Goldfrapp.

This feast for the ears listenable on the Spotify link 👇🏼
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VUGCbqbf1NMXEYMsC13M5?si=i_4046F5Sn-rJzGWapSwzw
Thanks for reading AND enjoy the trip.
