At Risk: 1 (Agent Liz Carlyle) - Softcover

Rimington, Stella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400079810 ISBN 13: 9781400079810

Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2006

Synopsis

A terrorist is targeting Britain. And to make matters worse it's an "invisible"-- Mi5-speak for someone traveling under a British passport. Virtually impossible to find before it's too late.

The job falls to Liz Carlyle, the most resourceful counter terror agent in British intelligence. Tracking down this invisible is a challenge like none she has faced before. It will require all her hard-won experience, to say nothing of her intelligence and courage. Drawing on her own years as Britain's highest-ranking spy, Stella Rimington gives us a story that is smart, tautly drawn, and suspenseful from first to last.

About this title

Review:

With At Risk, Dame Stella Rimington's first novel, she is probably aware that she'll be under negative pressure for her literary efforts quite as she was for her true-life revelations concerning the world of spooks in her autobiography Open Secret. In fact At Risk is a strikingly assured debut, with a female perspective on the secret world (via Rimington's heroine Liz) that is as fresh as it is plausible. Rimington's position in MI5 led to the inevitable comparisons with Judi Dench's performances as the first female M in the James Bond films, but what we're shown here is clearly a picture of the author in her early days--Liz is an overworked lower-echelon secret service operative, dealing with both the casual chauvinism of her colleagues and a potentially devastating terrorist plot. The latter is handled with terrifying verisimilitude (one senses the author's intimate knowledge of this world here), and the chapters involving the activities of the 'invisible' (a terrorist who passes as a native of the host country) is probably the most chillingly handled section of the book.

At Risk appears to be partly autobiographical--a novel with a female intelligence officer as its heroine will be construed that way--but it wouldn't be enough to carry an indifferently written book--and this is anything but that. In a plot that mixes East End gangsters, hierarchy and the role of women in government organisations, the central theme here is terrorism. Rimington clearly sees this as the major threat to homeland security in this day and age. Liz Carlisle is a very promising character--and the fact that a series is pending is welcome news. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"As engrossing and hard to resist as Fredrick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal." --Orlando Sentinel

"ExcitingÉ[Rimington] bids to join the ranks of such secret agent-authors as Graham Greene [and] John le Carr?. At Risk is an exciting debut novel."--The Wall Street Journal

"Entertaining. . . . Briskly told. . . . [Will] keep you turning the pages." --The Washington Post Book World

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1400079810
• ISBN 13: 9781400079810
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 416