This isn't my usual sort of book, but I was intrigued by a spy book written by an ex-spymaster. I'm afraid it disappointed - it was interesting in places, but full of clichéed characters [the good looking heroine, the impetuous sub-hero, the cold calculating villain, the incompetent boss], and 'l...
Why on earth did she kill Martin? It seemed gratuitous and to serve no purpose. Also the plot in this one was very lackluster. This book is my least favourite so far. Finally, where is Charles? The clumsy shelving of him is annoying and useless after all that build up in the first 3 or 4 books. C...
The former Director General of MI5 has written a spy thriller. It should have been the equivalent of Jamie Oliver cooking you dinner or David Beckham teaching your kids how to play football. In fact, it was a bit like Bruce Forsythe telling you how to stay young. I don’t think I truly understood ...
"In any campaign, the first stronghold that you have to occupy is your enemy's consciousness" - Feliks Dzerzhinsky KGB founder p 424. "They make a wilderness, and call it peace" - Tacitus, Roman Empire p 554.Quotations show the breadth of heroine Liz (and author Stella's) education.I may continue...
Rimington, Stella. Illegal Action, Arrow Books, London 2008. (Pages 394, Paperback)Rating: 5/10This book certainly couldn’t be a Booker Prize nominee, but Booker prize is what made me read it.I like a book to have a good story. It should be easy to read and a page turner if possible. Over the yea...
In recent years, new privacy laws introduced by the Swiss government had forced Swiss banks to cooperate with both their own and other countries’ tax authorities, and reveal a previously undreamed-of amount of information about their clients’ transactions. Inevitably, many banks had suffered, los...
The gatehouse seemed to have become a temporary police post. If there had been visitors staying there they must have been sent packing. Further up the drive two patrol cars were parked and as their car swung round to park on the gravel apron in front of Piggott’s house, a sergeant came out to gre...
Always cautious, always suspicious even of his own family, Mr Khan had resisted all her efforts to install another cash register, ignoring the queues that formed as a result, sometimes halfway to the shop’s front doors. It was only when he had seen with his own eyes two customers leave one evenin...
‘It’s Geoffrey Fane on the line.’Wetherby was a patient man, but even he had his limits. What did Fane want now? Yesterday he’d revealed that the two ‘names’ and their threat to the Gleneagles conference had come from some highly placed Syrian source whom the Americans had actually donated to Fan...