At Risk – Stella Rimington
Debut Thriller from the former Head of MI5
When Stella Rimington retired from her post as Britain's Chief Spook in 1996 she had the experience and knowledge to write the definitive, authentic, spy novel.
At Risk is the first in a series of novels featuring MI5 Intelligence Officer Liz Carlyle. According to Rimington, Liz Carlyle is part based on her own life and experiences and those of other female spooks she encountered during her career.
When she is first introduced in At Risk Carlyle is involved in a complicated relationship that could have a detrimental effect on her career. This quickly fades to background as a more pressing problem presents itself. MI5 learn from their rivals at MI6 that they have an ‘invisible’ on their hands. This in the murky world of Intelligence is a terrorist, native to the target country, who can move about at will and stands little chance of being discovered. It is Liz Carlyle’s job to track down the ‘invisible’ identify the target and prevent the planned terrorist attack.
The Afghan terrorist smuggled into Britain to work with the ‘invisible’ makes a mistake. Liz picks this up and uses all of her skills and experience plus a few buckets full of intuition to try and get inside the head of her enemy. If she can manage that she has a chance of averting disaster but she is working against the clock.
At Risk is a classic tale of good versus evil with a lot of depth and substance. Where Rimington has excelled is in making some of her ‘Good Guys’ appear to be rather bad and treating her ‘Bad Guys’ sympathetically.
Her main terrorist was a moderate young man who is politicised as a result of seeing his entire family murdered by American pilots who thought they were a terrorist cell instead of a crowd of Afghans celebrating a wedding. He comes to the UK seeking revenge.
Anyone reading this in the UK, after revelations about British Soldiers killed by so called ‘friendly fire’ is likely to feel a bit of sympathy for the young Afghan.
Add to that the stonewalling and total lack of cooperation from the US Government to legitimate requests by the UK Coroner and the subsequent leaking of the cockpit tapes the US Government sought to suppress. They revealed a couple of badly trained, Gung Ho, cowboys laughing as they shot up a UK convoy. After that Rimington’s ‘Bad Guys’ could start to look like hero’s.
But she doesn’t go that far. A bit of indiscriminate slaying of innocents that get in their way and there is no doubt that these guys really are bad and have to be stopped.
But Rimington has introduced the troubling thought that perhaps the war the west is currently waging against ‘Terrorism’ is begetting more ‘Terrorism’.
Before she was promoted to Director General of MI5 Stella Rimington served in all three branches of the Security Service, counter terrorism, counter espionage and counter subversion. In the second novel, Secret Asset, Liz Carlyle continues the fight against ‘Terrorism’ but will have moved to counter espionage by the time the third, Illegal Action, is published in September 2007.
