Stella RimingtonCritiques

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I enjoy these novels by a former head of MI5, Britain's Secret Service, and this one was especially well-written. Stella Rimington knows whereof she writes.

Always an intriguing admission by an author: that another person helped with the writing. One never knows entirely and exactly what that means. For what it is worth, in the case of the 2005 novel “At Risk,” the nominal author, Stella Rimington, was helped by Luke Jennings, author of the popular “Killing Eve” series.

Often, despite such a disclaimer, the nominal author does take some part in the writing and the plotting. “At Risk” is about a case handled by counterintelligence officer Liz Carlyle over the course of a few harrowing days. Rimington knows the world of counterintelligence inside out, having been a member of Britain’s MI5 for 27 years, ending her career there with four years as director general – as the head of this counterspy group. So I tend to believe her when she claims to have created the story told here.

A note to the uninitiated or just those who keep forgetting the difference between MI5 and MI6: Think of concentric rings laid over a map of the United Kingdom with a numeral “1” in the center of the Isle of Britain. Imagine the numerals going up to “5,” covering the English Channel and Northern Ireland. Now Imagine ring number “6” extending beyond the U.K.’s national boundaries and covering the rest of the world. That is the difference in jurisdiction between MI5 (close to home) and MI6 (everything outside of the U.K.).

There are, in practically every country, rivalries between intelligence agencies. Lawmakers and chief executives keep telling the agencies that they need to cooperate, but they continue to keep their own council anyway. (My impression is that Homeland Security, the agency created by law in the United States to coordinate between all the preexisting intelligence gathering agencies, backfired in that not only do agencies still keep intelligence from each other, but Homeland is one of the worst offenders as it lords it over and withholds from the other agencies instead of setting a collegial example of sharing.)

In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which was founded as an enforcer of federal law and policer of interstate crime, also has a counterintelligence division. This division is comparable to and a sort of counterpart of the UK’s MI5, while the Central Intelligence Agency is pretty much equivalent to the U.K.'s MI6. Other books I have read point to the parallels in relations between each country's domestic and foreign intelligence services, and one similarity is that they don’t trust each other. That is more or less what is going on in this novel, telegraphed early on during a meeting between MI5 and MI6 in which they share information, but there is, ever after, a sense that each might be holding some things back.

Aside: At the end of the novel, we learn that the same rivalry occurs in Pakistan where the Interior Ministry’s Intelligence Bureau does not get along with the Defense Ministry’s Inter-Services Intelligence group.

All of this bad faith between the right hand and the left within the same government, is backdrop to a case of what initially looks like international terrorism visited on Britain’s shores by two mysterious figures, a Englishwoman who enters the country from France and a Pakistani man who is smuggled into the country via a channel that was previously used to bring drugs from Germany to the eastern coast of England and is now being used to convey illegal immigrants, including prostitutes, laborers and, in this case, “specials” who pay premium dollar (I should say pound) for round-trip service.

Things rapidly go wrong when one of the smugglers on the British end decides to rob the special passenger of his heavy and presumably valuable knapsack (er, “rucksack” as the British prefer to say), but the Pakistani has a gun, and he uses it to blow the smuggler’s head off. This being England, the authorities take particular notice of murders committed with firearms. As Liz later notes, the terrorists’ operation was so carefully planned that it probably would have remained under the radar if only the smuggler had not been so greedy and his “special” passenger not so quick to kill him.

With a few short exceptions, the point of view goes back and forth between Liz’s viewpoint and that of “Lucy” (not her real name), the British confederate of the Pakistani man, Faraj. The two women are on opposite sides, one trying to arrest the other, the other trying to avoid being arrested before she and Faraj can complete their mission.

What is their mission? That seems to be for Faraj to know and for Liz to figure out. She and her colleagues collect information by the various means at their disposal, but they are constantly frustrated by how much they cannot detect, and it turns out in the end that there are crucial pieces they are not sharing with each other. (Local law enforcement also resents national law enforcement for not sharing everything in a timely manner – that turns out to be just as true in the U.K. as it is in the U.S.A.)

Faraj knows more than he is telling Lucy, too, but it turns out in the end that Lucy knows, all along, something about their target that she is not telling us. (Faraj must know it, too, so there is never any need to state it.) One false note is that Lucy tells Faraj that she knows that they are being pursued by a female officer, but she never reveals how she knows this. Are we to believe that it is woman’s intuition?

Speaking of what is known to the characters, phrases like “as you well know” turn up at least four times and possibly more. This is a timeworn way to introduce exposition to the reader even though the speaker knows very well that the other characters do not need the information explained to them. All writers should try to avoid this cliche.

But this is an entertaining and diverting read. There is excitement and intrigue – at least at intervals. The plot is more rewarding and the conclusion more satisfying than in some other stories I have encountered lately. Several of the characters are on their own journeys. They change, their relationships with others sometimes deepen, although the effect of the changes are not always beneficial or fully comprehensible (sometimes they are inconclusive and could be meant to be resolved in a sequel, which I gather may already have been published), but that does not mean that these changes are not evocative of human nature, which is a mystery that one cannot always fathom in life or in fiction. Is it consistent? That is the only expectation that must be met. Here it is consistent, more or less.

The language of “At Risk” is quite British. British English is famously different from its American counterpart. Spelling (“characterise” instead of the American spelling “characterize” and “tyres” instead of “tires”), alternative vocabulary (“knackered” for “worn out,” “windscreen” in place of our “windshield” and “tip” instead of “dump”), and often subtle but slightly jarring differences in grammar. For instance, British and American English favor different choices of verbal phrases and a different conjugation of verbs with collective nouns: “The organisation send” (British) instead of “The organization sends” (American). It is a matter of conceiving of the organization as a group of people (“they send”) versus the organization as a single entity or unit (“it sends”).

British English is fully on display throughout this novel, more so than usual, I feel. Start with the title, "At Risk," which is a more British way of saying "In Danger."

Or take a couple of sentences from the last two pages:
“Six [i.e., the spy agency MI6] spend rather less time talking to the Intelligence Bureau….” (Instead of "Six spends rather less time....")
“Much better to keep stumm….” ("Stumm" is similar in meaning to "mum" as in “mums the word.”)

I made the mistake of not keeping my “British English Dictionary” close at hand as I read, so I had to guess at what some words meant or else skip them.

La agente Liz Carlyle, protagonista de las tres novelas de Stella Rimington, es oficial de inteligencia en el servicio de antiterrorismo del MI5, la agencia de espionaje britnica. Tiene poco ms de treinta aos y le apasiona su trabajo. En esta primera novela, Carlyle, a raz de una serie de avisos y pistas aparentemente inconexos, empieza a sospechar que se est preparando un atentado terrorista en territorio britnico. Parece que el Islamic Terror Syndicate (nombre que se le da en la agencia al conjunto global de terroristas) va a introducir a un invisible (un nativo del pas objetivo) en Gran Bretaa. El superior de Liz, Charles Wetherby, confa totalmente en ella y la apoya en sus sospechas. Poco a poco, el equipo de Liz va atando cabos a partir de sucesos aislados (el asesinato de un pescador en un pueblo de la costa con un arma poco comn, las informaciones de los agentes en Afganistn sobre movimientos poco usuales de algn sospechosos), y la amenaza cobra verosimilitud.

An average thriller with somewhat shallow characters and a predictable outcome. Two invisibles have entered the UK, and they have a target in mind, destruction to be delivered in the form of a curde bomb. M15 Intelligence officer Liz Carlyle together with a motley crew of army officers and super smooth Bruno MaCay, Mi6's finest race against time to stop the predicted carnage. If you enjoy cheap thrills at the expense of character driven stories, then do read, however.....For those of you in the cheap seats I'd like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry!'
A little irrelevant quote for you to enjoy (thank you JL :) which neatly closes a review lamenting the time I have wasted reading this indigestible fodder!

I enjoyed this book, and rate it perhaps slightly less than 4 stars but more than 3. It was pretty interesting all the way, and the ending made sense. Unless I missed something, there was one character introduced early on, a young man working with Liz that she worried about, who never was brought up again, so I'm not sure why we were even introduced to him. Maybe I missed something, or maybe he'll pop up in a later book. I'll probably try another in the series, since this was only the first but was pretty good.

The plot hinged on two lucky breaks - targets originally pursued for purpose of destabilisation turned out to be close to intelligence. It could have been terrifically incredulous but Rimmington laid the background well, and you understand why the Russians and the Brits are both interested in Kapoor, for very different reasons. The other lucky break was less believable. Even less credulous was Kapoor's naivety. It was heartbreak watching this likable character fall into Hansen's trap.

I suppose that it would be difficult to think of a stronger provenance for a writer of spy thrillers than to have been Director General of MI5, as Stella Rimington was. Indeed, she was the first woman in that role, and the first holder of it to be publicly acknowledged as such. After publishing a volume of memoirs (extensively filleted to avoid releasing material too sensitive for the public conscience, although no less interesting for all that), she wrote a highly entertaining series of novels featuring Liz Carlyle, an empathetic and capable (although reassuringly far from infallible) Intelligence Officer. These clearly benefitted from Dame Stella’s inside knowledge (although I am sure that MI5 will have evolved significantly since her day), but avoided becoming bogged down in procedural verisimilitude. Her latest novel introduces a new protagonist, Manon Tyler, who is an analyst working for the CIA, about to be posted to the London Embassy.

The novel opens ack in the throes of the Cold War when a Bulgarian ship docks at Heysham in Lancashire. One of the crew disembarks, ostensibly to spend a night ashore, but he never returns. His departure is witnessed by Harry Bristow, a detective sergeant assigned to Special Branch. He should have followed up the young man’s disappearance, but for reasons of his own he failed to do so at the time.

Bristow encounters the fugitive many years later and finds that he has done well, establishing himself in business with a chain of kitchen design outlets throughout the North West of England, and, after a stint as a local councillor, is newly returned to Parliament as MP for Liverpool North.

Stella Rimington weaves the plot sinuously, but deftly, and the action moves quickly. As always, her characters are very plausible and empathetic. Manon in particular is very engaging, and is reminiscent in her way of Liz Carlyle in the early phases of her career. I was intrigued by Rimington’s decision to focus the novel on a CIA officer, which should lend an intriguing perspective to any further novels in what I hope is to become another series.

This spy thriller from the former head of MI5 was a pretty dull and lifeless affair. The plot involves undercover Russian assassins on the streets of London (which gave it a frisson of topicality), feuding oligarchs and art world shenanigans, but it never came together as a satisfying whole. Stella Rimington’s description of the day to day business of counter espionage feels like it’s probably very realistic, but it’s also pretty dull (basically lots of people following each other around and talking). The cast of characters, especially the desperately bland heroine, are all just as boring, which meant by the time their is a bit of excitement and action at the end I’d completely lost interest.

This fourth novel in the author's series of intelligence-themed thrillers featuring MI5 officer Liz Carlyle features a threat to a Middle East peace conference in Gleneagles in Scotland, from a source with their own particular motives. The number of agents running other agents in double or triple bluffs confused me a bit, but as ever Liz is a sympathetic figure and her colleagues are becoming clearer and more well-rounded ongoing characters, some of them rather likeable like her boss Charles Wetherby and her her assistant Peggy Kinsolving. I am enjoying this series more now and, as always any scepticism about the apparent implausibility of some of the plot twists, is offset by the fact of the author's former position as MI5 Director General.

As a young policeman Harry Bristow fell into a trap, now he is blackmailed to keep his secret. Peter Robinson, rising political star, has a secret that he doesn't want revealing. With the old Soviet regime in disarray, both the West and East still play power games and spy relentlessly but what if one side had a hidden asset?
This is an assured novel from one who knows! OK, it is formulaic at times and the dialogue can be a bit creaky but the plot is tight and clever. It's just a quick bit of light entertainment and sometimes that's no bad thing

Cool spy novel with throwbacks to Cold-War era tension. This was a highly complex read with lots of details and connecting characters to unpack from sleeper cells in lazy Vermont college towns to Russian contacts, to schools for refugees, to East German era sleepers who were implanted in the west but never really used. Or were they? Who is working for who and how do all of these pieces fit together? Needless to say, this was a book that was really hard to put down.

Author Stella Remington’s background working in this field is apparent in the technical aspects of the writing. I found myself completely engrossed, wondering where this tale of espionage was going next, who was secretly betraying whom, and when they were going to get caught.

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.

Quite unputdownable, though the pace of the plot when it comes to the two bombers was slightly slower. The story is entirely believable, not like those fancy chases. Nevertheless, I find it incredulous that the investigators missed out on the female bomber's name because it is French-sounding and it was mistakenly indicted as a man's name on the list of passengers. But the ending was good - nuanced, teaching us that things can't be seen in black and white.

This is the third in the author's series of intelligence-themed thrillers featuring MI5 officer Liz Carlyle. Unlike the previous two dealing mostly with Islamic terrorism, this concerns an apparent plot to murder a Russian oligarch in London. The plot is not what it seems, but all the same struck me as rather less dramatic than its predecessors and somewhat inconsequential, so I enjoyed this one rather less½

This is the second in the author's series of intelligence-themed thrillers featuring MI5 officer Liz Carlyle, obviously based on the author's own experiences in the organisation before she rose to become the first female and the first publicly acknowledged Director General of MI5 in 1992. The plot involves radicalised Muslim youths, a disaffected MI5 officer and, more peripherally, Irish republican terrorists, combined in a way which I found rather unconvincing though, again as with the first novel, the fact of the author's background makes one wonder whether this is a fair judgement. Liz Carlyle is a sympathetic and well-rounded character though, and I will continue reading this series.

Don't know why the book is titled 'Rip Tide', although there are ships and some action takes place on the sea. Apart from the title, it is quite an enjoyable read. The plot is not too complicated. and Rimington writes in a way that creates suspense. Plus she was an ex-MI5 officer, so there should be some credulity to the plot.½

I picked this up because of her job as head of MI5. I think it is her first book and half way through I wanted to grip her and send her on a good creative writing course. Maybe that is what happened as the first half of the book is all about setting the scene and involved a lot of tedious detail about clothes and food and possibly even furniture - and is far too long. Then the story picks up with some real tension and pace and a lot of cleverness. I have friends in this part of Norfolk and so I enjoyed the way the plot was rooted in the places and countryside.

Liz Carlyle, Stella Rimington’s engaging and resourceful MI5 officer makes a welcome return. Now back on the mainland after her brief posting to Northern Ireland, she finds herself picking up the investigation into the involvement of a young British national who was captured by a French Navy patrol boat when it came to the rescue of a freight ship being attacked by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. While the prisoner maintains a stoical silence, closer investigation into his background reveals that he had, until fairly recently, been a regular attendee at a mosque in Birmingham that had already caught the attention of local Special Branch officers.

As relevant now as it when it was first published ten years ago (which was ten years after the attack on the World TraceCentre sparked the War Against Terror in earnest), the story follows the intelligence services’ concerns about the risk of radicalisation. Dame Stella obviously know her stuff – she was, after all, Director General of MI5 (and one would like to think that many of Liz Carlyle’s quality reflect the author herself). Indeed, my own sister was vetted by her forty years ago when they were both based in the UK’s diplomatic community in Brussels.

Stella Rimington’s novels plot a course somewhere between the grim, bleak and somewhat shabby world inhabited by the characters of John le Carre’s world, and the hedonistic and hi tech romps of Ian Fleming. She does not offer the glorious prose of le Carre, nor his searing exploration of the human condition, but she does promise her reads compelling characters and plausible plots.

One of the prevailing themes is the occasionally strained relationships between the various intelligence organisations. While it is only natural that the agencies of other countries might have differing, and even diametrically opposed, objectives to their British counterparts (and in this book we find the American and French intelligence organisations participating), we also regularly encounter conflicts within the British secret community, with MI5 and MI6 treading on each other’s toes.

All in all, this was a very enjoyable story, leaving me keen to read the next in the sequence.

This is a re-read of the first of the author's series of intelligence-based thrillers, a theme she has been more than anyone else qualified to pursue as the ex-Director General of MI5. The plot was as gripping as I remember it, with a stark depiction of the mindset of terrorists utterly convinced of the rightness of their chosen course of action, though again I was slightly disappointed that the connection between the two terrorists relies on a massively remote coincidence. Liz Carlyle is partly autobiographical, though the author claims the other characters and plot are all imaginary. Nevertheless, the author's own background means that this is a very well written and authentic thriller.½

I would be interested to know to what extent Liz Carlyle, the appealing protagonist of Stella Rimington’s espionage novels, is based upon the author herself. Liz is pragmatic, resourceful and quick thinking, relying upon her own abilities rather than the high tech accessories that so often clutter spy novels.

On a related point, having been rereading the sequence, I also wonder how far the character of Zoe Reynolds, who featured so notably in the first three seasons of the television series Spooks is based upon Liz Carlyle. They share the same practical approach to the numerous challenges and operations thrown their way, and both display an occasional healthy cynicism, or even despair, about the value or rectitude of their role.

Dead Line represents the fourth outing for Liz Carlyle, and once again she finds herself feeling as wary of her MI6 and CIA counterparts as of the ‘official’ enemy. A major Middle East peace summit has been scheduled to be held at the luxury Scottish hotel complex of Gleneagles, but intelligence filters down to MI6 about a Syrian plot to disrupt it. Liz is assigned to investigate potential links to the plot in the UK, and to ensure that the peace talks can proceed safely.

One of the great qualities of Liz Carlyle as a character is her humanity. She isn’t perfect, and occasionally makes mistakes. She is also as susceptible to mistaken first impressions as anyone else, and finds herself having to reconsider various assumptions she has made about her family and personal life. Where Rimington shows her deftness as a writer is in balancing Liz’s personal hinterland with the requirements of the plot, and never allowing the former to overshadow or dwarf the latter.

This is not an edge of the seat thriller – that is not the sort of book that Stella Rimington is aiming for. It is, however, a well-crafted, well written and entertaining story, that captures (and then retains) the reader’s attention right from the start.

Secret Asset" is a credible, competent but unexceptional spy thriller. It eschews melodrama but doesn't have much to put in its place other than counter-espionage procedures that are interesting but not exciting.

The audiobook is four hours long, with each chapter being a one hour chapter. The structure disciplined the exposition in a way that made me feel as if I were attending a briefing: Context, Problem, Problem-solving, Denouement.

I enjoyed the clever way the ghosts of the Troubles in Northern Ireland where linked to modern-day home-grown Islamic terrorism. I thought the characterisation of the main players was more deftly done than in the first Liz Carlyle book, "At Risk" I didn't figure out the plot. I did believe the politics, or at least the Irish side of it that I am familiar with. "Secret Asset held my interest for four hours but it won't stay in my memory long.

Update 2020: The Booker fuss where Rimington was chair and it all went terribly badly because she wanted readability, entirely escaped me.

But I note this. Sam Jordison who runs bookclub for the Guardian and therefore gets to go to the prizegiving could scarcely have been more disparaging of Rimington. He said:

'And then?

It took me quite a while to figure out what was happening. Was Stella Rimington joking when she compared the publishing world with the KGB at its height, thanks to its use of "black propaganda, destabilisation operations, plots and double agents"? Ah no, she wasn't joking. At least I don't think so – and not if Howard Jacobson's face was anything to go by when the camera fortunately zeroed in on him. As he ages, his physiognomy is becoming almost as eloquent as his writing. Last night it said: "What the hell?"' 20 October 2011 The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/19/stella-rimington-booker-...

To which I juxtapose Guardian feature writer (and therefore I assume quite the superior of Sam) Stuart Jeffries 12 days earlier: 8 October 2011

'The former MI5 chief turned spy-thriller writer and Man Booker prize jury chairman who, for the last hour, has been a study in question-deflating diplomacy, is angry. "As somebody interested in literary criticism [her degree from Edinburgh was in English literature], it's pathetic that so-called literary critics are abusing my judges and me. They live in such an insular world they can't stand their domain being intruded upon."

It's hard to understand why she's so cross – surely hissed denunciations, counter-denunciations and deals done behind closed doors during her 40-year career as a spy were ideal training for judging Britain's leading literary prize. And surely the media flaying of Booker judges' credentials is such an annual ritual that no one with a thick skin would be troubled by it.' https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/oct/07/stella-rimington-man-booker-...



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This is so badly written, I'm astonished to find it is a late number in a series. People tried one and came back for more.

On the back cover the Wall Street Journal is quoted as saying the author makes a bid for the ranks of Le Carre, Greene etc. That's like saying McDonalds is making a bid for a Michelin star.

Read twenty pages, each more excruciating than the one before.

Clearly the woman doesn't know Geneva. She has the dude who kicks the book off wondering whether to stay home to have defrosted pizza for dinner or go out to a local cafe for something more interesting. Everybody knows there is nothing more interesting to eat in Geneva than defrosted pizza.

Update 2020: The Booker fuss where Rimington was chair and it all went terribly badly because she wanted readability, entirely escaped me.

But I note this. Sam Jordison who runs bookclub for the Guardian and therefore gets to go to the prizegiving could scarcely have been more disparaging of Rimington. He said:

'And then?

It took me quite a while to figure out what was happening. Was Stella Rimington joking when she compared the publishing world with the KGB at its height, thanks to its use of "black propaganda, destabilisation operations, plots and double agents"? Ah no, she wasn't joking. At least I don't think so – and not if Howard Jacobson's face was anything to go by when the camera fortunately zeroed in on him. As he ages, his physiognomy is becoming almost as eloquent as his writing. Last night it said: "What the hell?"' 20 October 2011 The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/19/stella-rimington-booker-...

To which I juxtapose Guardian feature writer (and therefore I assume quite the superior of Sam) Stuart Jeffries 12 days earlier: 8 October 2011

'The former MI5 chief turned spy-thriller writer and Man Booker prize jury chairman who, for the last hour, has been a study in question-deflating diplomacy, is angry. "As somebody interested in literary criticism [her degree from Edinburgh was in English literature], it's pathetic that so-called literary critics are abusing my judges and me. They live in such an insular world they can't stand their domain being intruded upon."

It's hard to understand why she's so cross – surely hissed denunciations, counter-denunciations and deals done behind closed doors during her 40-year career as a spy were ideal training for judging Britain's leading literary prize. And surely the media flaying of Booker judges' credentials is such an annual ritual that no one with a thick skin would be troubled by it.' https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/oct/07/stella-rimington-man-booker-...



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This is so badly written, I'm astonished to find it is a late number in a series. People tried one and came back for more.

On the back cover the Wall Street Journal is quoted as saying the author makes a bid for the ranks of Le Carre, Greene etc. That's like saying McDonalds is making a bid for a Michelin star.

Read twenty pages, each more excruciating than the one before.

Clearly the woman doesn't know Geneva. She has the dude who kicks the book off wondering whether to stay home to have defrosted pizza for dinner or go out to a local cafe for something more interesting. Everybody knows there is nothing more interesting to eat in Geneva than defrosted pizza.

Update 2020: The Booker fuss where Rimington was chair and it all went terribly badly because she wanted readability, entirely escaped me.

But I note this. Sam Jordison who runs bookclub for the Guardian and therefore gets to go to the prizegiving could scarcely have been more disparaging of Rimington. He said:

'And then?

It took me quite a while to figure out what was happening. Was Stella Rimington joking when she compared the publishing world with the KGB at its height, thanks to its use of "black propaganda, destabilisation operations, plots and double agents"? Ah no, she wasn't joking. At least I don't think so – and not if Howard Jacobson's face was anything to go by when the camera fortunately zeroed in on him. As he ages, his physiognomy is becoming almost as eloquent as his writing. Last night it said: "What the hell?"' 20 October 2011 The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/oct/19/stella-rimington-booker-...

To which I juxtapose Guardian feature writer (and therefore I assume quite the superior of Sam) Stuart Jeffries 12 days earlier: 8 October 2011

'The former MI5 chief turned spy-thriller writer and Man Booker prize jury chairman who, for the last hour, has been a study in question-deflating diplomacy, is angry. "As somebody interested in literary criticism [her degree from Edinburgh was in English literature], it's pathetic that so-called literary critics are abusing my judges and me. They live in such an insular world they can't stand their domain being intruded upon."

It's hard to understand why she's so cross – surely hissed denunciations, counter-denunciations and deals done behind closed doors during her 40-year career as a spy were ideal training for judging Britain's leading literary prize. And surely the media flaying of Booker judges' credentials is such an annual ritual that no one with a thick skin would be troubled by it.' https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/oct/07/stella-rimington-man-booker-...



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This is so badly written, I'm astonished to find it is a late number in a series. People tried one and came back for more.

On the back cover the Wall Street Journal is quoted as saying the author makes a bid for the ranks of Le Carre, Greene etc. That's like saying McDonalds is making a bid for a Michelin star.

Read twenty pages, each more excruciating than the one before.

Clearly the woman doesn't know Geneva. She has the dude who kicks the book off wondering whether to stay home to have defrosted pizza for dinner or go out to a local cafe for something more interesting. Everybody knows there is nothing more interesting to eat in Geneva than defrosted pizza.

Another fast and fun read. Pretty simple plot this time - which is good because that minimizes the number of times the reader will stop and say, "Wait - what about ..." or "Would anyone really do ...".