Poison, Shadow and Farewell is the concluding part in Javier Marias spy trilogy masterwork, Your Face Tomorrow.
Jacques Deza is back in London and once again working for the secret intelligence agency run by his old Oxford friend Bernard Tupra. Deza finds himself increasingly under the spell of his shadowy boss, forced to witness a savage attack on an old man and watch Tupra's collection of incriminating videotapes of important public figures. The recordings document unconventional private lives - and horrific acts. The scenes enter him like a poison, contaminating everything good, yet he is powerless to counteract them. Set against a background of brutality, Poison, Shadow and Farewell asks whether violence can ever be justified and completes the extraordinary journey that has led us on a descent into hell and a re-emergence, not entirely unscathed, into life.
