I thought I was going to enjoy this but couldn't get past the first chapter. Very unusual for me - it just didn't grab me at all.

I didn't like the writing style, the characters or the constant 'dun dun duh' alleged underlying tension.

Not for me, I am afraid, but I am sure there are many others who will disagree with me. Maybe spy thrillers aren't my thing.

Dyer used to be a journalist in South America, but gave up journalism after spiking what could have been his best ever story on ethical grounds. He has moved to Oxford to send his son to a prep school where the other parents are almost uniformly rich and influential. He makes friends with an Iranian physicist on the touchline of the football pitch and when the Iranian makes a major discovery and then disappears he leaves Dyer with some clues to his work. Many agencies would kill or pay handsomely for the information and Dyer has the moral dilemma of deciding what to do with it and the problem of keeping himself and his son safe. Its an exciting, complex and well written thriller - hugely enjoyable. I hadn't read any of Shakespeare's previous work and at first glance this looks like a departure but I hope he can write more like this..

The Sandpit by Nicholas Shakespeare is a bit of a slow burner but well worth persevering with.

John Dyer, an ex journalist, has returned from Brazil to Oxford with his son and enrolled him in the rep school that he had attended nearly 50 years ago. Life is dull and predictable in the middle class Oxford academic and school community until an Iranian, Rustum Marvar, parent entrusts John with the results of his research. When Marvar and his son disappear, the mystery unfolds at pace as different intelligence services and murky business interests encircle John and his son trying to find the potentially world changing secret.

The Sandpit is elegant, well observed and quite readable but overall a little unsatisfying.

Interesting book of the spy genre. I didn’t find it especially easy to get into finding the lead character somewhat reflective and sedentary.

I’m not that well read in this genre so perhaps it is better for those who are. Well written with characters of depth.

A rather beautifully written thriller which became more about a journey than a thrilling conclusion. John Dyer, a man haunted by his past is passed a red hot baton by an enigmatic Iranian scientist, for a relay where he spends the majority of the race trying to safely offload it. The baton in question being the solution to sustainable nuclear fusion on Earth. Maybe Dyer should have taken a short ride in his Beetle to Culham just up the road from Oxford to get a feeling as to where he could possibly deposit it? A sequential release to ITER would have been a good idea as it is an organisation comprised of 35 countries with a common goal of sustainable fusion. The various 'actors' do not come out of it well as the quickest way to have secured the secret document would have been to kidnap his son. Anyway, Dyer gets to choose where the baton is passed but fails to make the unwitting recipient aware of the dangers.
A minor niggle, John Dyer as a boy would have used polystyrene cement, not Araldite on his model aircraft (the description of the smell was that of the former).

I struggled to make a connection with The Sandpit. For me, it seemed somewhat disjointed and I could not get into it, though the espionage genre is one I most relish. It's easy to blame lockdown as my home-based activities have certainly ratcheted up so I have been distracted.

This was a slow build that just didn't hit me at the right time. A thoughtful, reflective novel we spend a lot of time with Dyer as he reflects on his past life as a married journalist in Brazil and his current state being a single parent to a boy in an expensive private school that may be beyond his means as he researches his next book. A case of bullying introduces him to the father of his son's classmate and that leads to more than expected. A good premise but one that I couldn't latch on to, sorry.

I haven’t read a lot of books in the espionage genre but I have read Le Carre , so I thought I’d give it a go. I wasn’t overly taken with the story but what threw me was the horrible writing style which consistently bumped me out of the story. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

I’m sorry to say but The Sandpit wasn’t for me as I found it a struggle to get into and just not entertaining or gripping.

Whether it was the style of writing or the storyline I’m not sure

Not one I would recommend

I have very mixed feelings about this novel. I have never read any of the author’s previous work and for the first half of the book, I was totally engrossed. The writing is exceptional with some wonderfully descriptive prose and I loved the way the author changed to the use of the third present tense, sometimes in the middle of a paragraph. Authors such as Hilary Mantel have written whole novels (or even trilogies) in this tense and whilst some people seem to find it irritating, I think that when used appropriately, it adds an additional layer of urgency and pulls the reader deeper into the book.

I also found the central premise of the novel – the moral dilemma attached to a potential scientific discovery that could change mankind forever and just as importantly, how you would handle the secret, intriguing and thought-provoking. The central characters were believable and well-drawn out and as other reviewers have suggested, this had all the makings of a novel to stand alongside the best of Le Carre and Greene.

Unfortunately for me, I found the second half of the novel disappointing. I felt that the author had literally lost the plot which started meandering off in several different directions (including a treatise on the basics of fly fishing). I also found the sudden re-appearance of Dyer’s schoolboy friend, Rougetel who was now a sort of down-and-out hippy, contrived and unconvincing and led to an unsatisfactory conclusion to the novel.

Finally, whilst I always enjoy a book which leaves a few loose ends about which you can make up your own mind, this book seemed to leave just about every major plotline unresolved. For example (spoiler alert), what happened to Marvar and Samir, what did Rougetel do with the information he received, where did Dyer’s relationship with Miranda go, etc etc.

So for me, this was a real curate’s egg. I am going to give it 4 stars (just) for the superb first half and the wonderful writing but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that a potentially great addition to the genre, ended very tamely.

My thanks to Netgalley and to Random House, the publishers, for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Nicholas Shakespeare's spy novel is both subtle & sophisticated but still packs a powerful punch. It has the style & elegance of vintage John le Carre & the evocative passion of a Graham Greene classic.
Imagine our world on the verge of destruction. Now the holy grail of challenges for scientists is to find out how to replicate the processes of the sun & stars on earth - forever solving our energy problems.
Anyone who has read Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels will know the Jericho area of Oxford well. Amidst the libraries & posh schools a father tries to protect himself & his son but he has something that every nation in the world wants.
In a singularly beautiful & moving novel fear & tension permeates throughout.

This novel is about a retired journalist who moves back to his hometown of Oxford having spent many years abroad and tries to make a new life for himself and his young son. I found the start painfully slow, though thankfully the pace picked up about a third of the way through when the main protagonist unwittingly finds himself caught up in a dangerous drama of espionage and suspicion. The premise is very interesting and there's insightful thinking about the surrounding politics, but unfortunately I didn’t really gel with the narrative style which I found overly tangential so I kept losing interest in what was otherwise a fascinating plot involving an Iranian nuclear physicist who may or may not have made a scientific breakthrough and the terrible dilemma faced by his involuntary ally.

I was completely drawn into this book, and felt quite bereft when I had finished it. It was a joy to read such an intelligent, well-written book, and I thought the author's evocation of Oxford was spot on. I worked in Oxford for many years (although I am not rich or clever enough to move in the circles described in the book) and I enjoyed reading about places I know very well. The story is gripping, and the characters (even the completely awful ones) are compelling. I will definitely read more of Nicholas Shakespeare's books.

Lovely story.enjoyed this one immensely.

John Dyer ,ex journalist and novelist returns to his home city of Oxford. He has been in Brazil and has come back to Oxford with his son Leandro aged 11, leaving the sons mother in Brazil where she married and has other children.

He has put Leandro into the same school where Dyer himself went to, The Phoenix. While Dyer is there watching his son .play football he makes an acquaintance with an Iranian ,Marvan who also has a son there,Samir.Samir also plays football with Leandro.This chance meeting between Marvan and Dyer leads to a world of international intrigue when Marvan goes missing leaving Dyer with vital information which everyone wants.

Wonderful book where Dyer visits his memory of attendance at the school where he eventually meets some of his old school chums who now appear not to be who he thought they were.

A very interesting and thought-provoking book based on an unusual topic.
The book provided a different take on Oxford than one is used to reading but this made the setting more interesting.
The writer sets the book out with a wide range of characters from various backgrounds randomly thrown together in Oxford and defines them very skillfully. How they are then drawn together is cleverly done.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book although I found the ending a bit strange. I did, however, understand the point the author was making.

Phew, I did persevere until the end in the hope that there would be some plot development, how wrong I was. It felt more like a history of privilege and public education in Oxford than “contemporary thriller”. In fact it wasn’t thrilling at all.
I did not realise who the author was until I googled the name. I think the style of writing is more in keeping with non-fiction than a mystery or thriller.

Nicholas Shakespeare's fascinating literary espionage thriller is reminiscent of the classic espionage literature, and draws on issues facing our contemporary world. With the collapse of his marriage, former foreign correspondent, John Dyer has returned to Oxford with his 11 year old son, Leandro, from Brazil. Spending his time doing research in the library on the Tupi, an obscure indigenous Brazilian tribe, John is struggling to find his feet in his new life after years spent abroad, he is a man riddled with doubts and indecision. He finds himself on the edges of the kind of influential social circles that would normally have been beyond his sphere, lacking the equivalent financial resources, through Leandro's private prep school, the Phoenix, a school he himself attended as a child. The school's intake is now distinctly international, with parents from a wide ranging set of backgrounds, including hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs and the intelligence services.


Leandro and his friend, Samir, are being bullied which leads to John meeting the groundbreaking Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, working at Oxford University, and having discussions with him on issues such as social class. A disturbed and worried Marvar finds himself confiding his concerns and breakthrough with John, prior to him and his son vanishing. John suddenly finds him under strong and intense pressure, interrogated, under the spotlight, finding himself a person of interest to various parties as the last person to have seen Marvar. He tries to protect his son, whilst mulling ove his moral dilemma that is weighing him down, whilst being surrounded by danger, intrigue and the murky world of espionage.

Shakespeare's storytelling is compulsive, if overly wordy in a manner which may put off some readers, and I very much liked the ongoing theme of the sandpit in the past and what it might signify in the present. The novel covers issues of social class, global politics and conflict, power, money, espionage agencies and amorality through its disparate cast of characters. This is an engaging read, intricately plotted, inhabited by complicated characters, that skilfully resonates with the complexities of our contemporary world today. Many thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.

I didn’t really go for this book. It was full of stereotypes, the aloof Russian mother and her industrialist husband, the rather loud CIA agent and the hinted at stiff upper lip Spooks of the British Secret Service. Throw into this heady mix an Iranian nuclear scientist and an author writing about obscure Brazilian tribes, and you have this rather slow, meandering story about schoolboys being bullied, and a sandpit.
John Dyer is the author, divorced and living in Oxford with his son, Leandro. Rustum Marvar is the scientist, living with his son, Samir. His wife is being held captive in Iran, in order that any scientific discoveries, are reported back to the Iranians and not sold to the Americans. Both boys are being bullied, and their fathers form a friendship, in which they argue the rights and wrongs of the social classes, who has the right to nuclear power and is it right to give in to bullies.
I found the novel confusing. Most of the characters were male, the women were seen as decorous, haughty and cold. The sandpit is either for hiding secrets, or a approximation of an ostrich hiding its head in the sand in order not to deal with local problems instead of always wanting to put the world to rights. I didn’t like the conclusion, it wasn’t plausible, just conjecture. Not the authors best book.

Intriguing, literary thriller full of vivid descriptions of scenes, thoughts and emotions. Very evocative - made you fell as if you were in the location

DNF at 10%

I'm sorry, but I found the prose style so irritating that it completely detracted from the story: for example, on learning that his son is being bullied 'Dyer had a vision of his son like a prisoner of the Tupi Indians, suffering in silence the punishment that they reserved for their bitterest enemies, wrapped in a writhing coil of poisonous toads which had started to shrink around his neck.' Um, really? Your son is being bullied and that's what you think?

Inappropriate and stretched metaphors abound: ' the remark detonated something in Marvar', a woman has 'a deranged eye' for no discernible reason as she asks a perfectly normal question ('swivelling to peck him with tiny questions about South America'), another woman is 'wild-looking' as she hands her daughter her cello from the car, an idea is 'stuck, impossible to pour back into a frosted glass', a prospectus is 'woollier than one of Vivien's tea cosies'... I could go on and bear in mind I couldn't bear to read beyond 10% with this lurid, over-reaching writing. The story might have been brilliant but the prose had me gritting my teeth - not for me, sorry!

I began by liking this character-study/thriller a lot, but it began to pall quite badly in the second half.

The story is of John Dyer, an ex-journalist now divorced and living in Oxford where his son attends the private school where Dyer himself went. The opening is a slow revelation of Dyer’s circumstances and mental state which I found very well done. Then, Dyer finds himself in possession of some potentially world-changing information which a lot of people in governments and big, powerful international businesses are very keen to get their hands on. It becomes a sort of espionage novel, with Dyer’s great moral dilemma about what to do at its heart.

Much of the book is taken up with Dyer’s life and character, plus that of those around him – wealthy, rather self-obsessed people, some of whom have rather sinister backgrounds of one sort or another. The thriller part is rather less than thrilling a lot of the time, with Dyer being infuriatingly indecisive and rather pusillanimous in the guise of weighing up moral matters, and the denouement doesn’t help this. Also, Nicholas Shakespeare’s style becomes a bit wearisome. He is a very good writer in many ways, but especially after about half way I found the prose becoming a little show-offy and mannered.

As an example, every so often he slips from a normal narrative past-tense to present tense for a few sentences and then back again, like this:
“He dashed into the Dragon Cinema, and bought a ticket to a film that had already begun. He fell asleep after ten minutes, and when he wakes up the three people in the cinema are leaving. It’s the middle of the day as he emerges. He has no memory of what he’s watched. He feels in another time zone, another country. In slow steps, he headed back towards the town centre, plunged into a canal of images.”
Now, perhaps I just haven’t studied English Literature to a sufficiently advanced level to appreciate some subtle emotional intensity in this technique, but to me it was just extremely irritating – and it got more frequent and more irritating the longer the book went on. It kept throwing me out of the narrative, leaving me trying to re-orientate myself and wrestle with the prose and I eventually got very grumpy about it. (And “a canal of images”? Seriously?)

There are also rather over-long episodes seemingly designed to show us how much Shakespeare knows about academic Oxford, fly-fishing and other subjects, at least one monumentally convenient coincidence and so on.

I was disappointed overall. I expected a thoughtful, insightful, well-constructed and involving book from such a respected author, but I didn’t really get it in the end and was left feeling that there is less here than meets the eye. It’s by no means a bad book, but it’s not all that good either.

(My thanks to Vintage Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley.)