Page Turners – September 2026 review

In September the Page Turners read ‘Gabriel’s Moon‘ by William Boyd. This book, Boyd’s eighteenth, was published in 2024 and is the first in a trilogy, although it can be read without feeling the need to move on to the others.

The book is about Gabriel Dax and is set in the early sixties. Gabriel is a travel writer but when he has the opportunity to interview a political figure, he gets inadvertently drawn into the world of international espionage. He embarks on a series of missions for his MI6 handler at the same time as embarking on therapy to resolve the fact that he is haunted by traumas in his childhood. There are many different strands to the book; Gabriel himself is bewildered as to how everything links together and the reader can be equally confused.

The book is one that we could easily imagine being made into a film and we likened it to James Bond. The author has worked as a screenwriter and has also written an authorised James Bond novel so the comparison seems justified.

We all enjoyed reading the book and romped through it and therefore have decided it was definitely a page turner. However, it failed to stand up to scrutiny. We felt there were many implausibilities within the story and that many events depicted did not reflect life as it would have been in the intended time period. Also, the more we looked at the lead character’s behaviour, the less we liked him.  Perhaps this is one best enjoyed for the escapism and not analysed too much.

If you would like to try this book for yourself, do get in touch and see if one of us will swap our page turner for one of yours.

Deborah Wallis, convenor