A Spy's Life - Hardcover

Porter, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752838598 ISBN 13: 9780752838595

Publisher: Orion, 2001

Synopsis

Robert Cope Harland ended his career as a British spy in an Austrian hospital, after being tortured and beaten by Czech security agents in the last days of the communist regime. He was young enough then to find a new life with the Red Cross and then with the UN.

Twelve years later his UN plane crashes in mysterious circumstances at La Guardia airport, New York and Harland is the only survivor. Unwittingly he is pulled into a world of relentless intrigue - and back into his old profession. A spy¿s life, once blighted by the Cold War, is now threatened by the equally ruthless forces of modern espionage.

About this title

Review:

Henry Porter's A Spy's Life surpasses even its predecessor Remembrance Day, which achieved an unprecedented amount of enthusiastic word of mouth. Here, he brilliantly blends the thriller elements into a bizarre and surrealistic narrative that constantly surprises the reader.

A massive air crash in New York kills 19 people, most of them working for the United Nations. The only survivor is a British ex-spy, Robert Harland. After a traumatic encounter with torture in Czechoslovakia during the Velvet Revolution, he is now working for the UN in a low-key, non-espionage role. Anyone familiar with the genre will know that attempts to retire from the spy trade are always doomed to failure, and Harland's freak survival of the plane crash soon makes him public property again. The FBI and other shadowy forces are keen to find out what he was doing on the plane. And as Harland speedily finds himself in lethal situations again, his life is further complicated by the appearance of a young man claiming to be his son by Eva, a young Czech agent with whom Harland was in love. With a mass murderer called Viktor Lipnik figuring into the equation, the reader is quickly beguiled by the kind of highly dangerous pyrotechnics that distinguished John le Carré's early books. In fact, the influence of le Carré's finest book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, is evident here, and it's a measure of Porter's success that he is more than able to hold his own in this august company. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"This entertaining second novel by Porter (Remembrance Day) never flags despite a labyrinthine plot whose action extends from the United States to England and on to Eastern Europe. Recommended for all public libraries."

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0752838598
• ISBN 13: 9780752838595
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416