Secret Service

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Besides this huge responsibility in MI6 and the evident dangers that it carries, Kate also has to juggle her family life and that helps give the novel extra depth - there’s her Civil Servant husband Stuart, her estranged mother Lucy, now in a care home with dementia, and fractious teenagers Fiona and Gus. With the stakes this high, can the truth ever come out? Or is the cost of uncovering it a price that no one, least of all Kate, can afford to pay? What ensues is a twist filled, fast paced thrill ride. There are many misdirections in discovering who Viper is and it really keeps you guessing. I found this book really hard to put down and read it in less than 24 hours. I highly recommend!. Kate Henderson, a senior officer at MI6, has a borscht bowl of troubles. When her team bugs an oligarch's yacht, they learn that the Russians have co-opted a British politician and that the prime minister is ailing and will soon leave office. Is this disinformation, intentionally leaked to gum up internal British politics? The detail about the prime minister's health is key: No one in Britain has been aware of any issue, and when he unexpectedly resigns for health reasons, the report seems to be confirmed. But as Kate drills down on which politician may be the Kremlin's person, it also becomes clear that there's a mole on her team, and in fact there are potential betrayals swirling all around Kate. Is her boss, Ian Granger, head of the Europe and Russia desk, genuinely doubtful, or is he dismissing her suspicions because he's the mole? Is her husband cheating on her? Is her 15-year-old daughter really having sex with the pierced and tattooed Jed, who is a few years older? And will the MI6 director, known as C, force her to reveal her secret source in the Russian diplomatic corps? Dauntless, Kate slowly unravels the twisted skeins of deceit and betrayal, and though she loses much in the process, she perseveres. If all this seems reminiscent of some of the trials and tribulations of George Smiley, well, it's a new generation. Kate is a good spy but as the investigation proceeds you feel she can not be a loyal wife, supportive parent and faithful agent of the government.

It's quite rare to see a novel shoot itself in the foot so badly, but it's been done. (Paul Auster's Mr. Vertigo for example.) Or perhaps, not in the foot, but in the head in this case, because thriller mysteries rarely get dumber than this set up. Attempting to rebuild her shattered life in the South of France, former MI6 operative Kate Henderson receives an unexpected and most unwelcome visit from an old adversary: the UK Prime Minister. He has an extraordinary story to tell – and he needs her help. Their relationship has never recovered since Harry's wife's suicide, for which Sean holds his father responsible. And Harry, with his career on the verge of disintegration, needs to find him and put things right. But largely—and this is maybe the book’s biggest weakness—she is wrestling with the struggle of ‘being a woman’ and ‘having it all.’ Along with her job, Kate also juggles taking care of her two kids, her aging mother, and, for good measure, an ailing dog. There are various family problems, as well as Kate’s contentious relationship with her mother, who cheated Kate’s father with a family friend and upended their family. None of the family drama is particularly urgent or, really, dramatic, and even though Kate should have enough going on with unmasking Russian spies and saving democracy, she still comes down on herself: The identity of Russian mole "Viper" was revealed and The Teder Unsatisfactory Ending Alert™ came on with sirens blaring...and I sent the novel sailing across the room to splat against the far wall and tumble into the waste bin.

'Do you think it might be time to acknowledge you’re too old for this game?'

A spy thriller where everyone is a suspect and you’re not sure whom to trust – there were times I even questioned the main character. But in addition to being a spy thriller, this is also a story where secret service agent must juggle the demands of both work and home. Overall, it was sufficiently involving to keep me interested until the end. It’s nothing that special but it’s not bad by any means and I’ll try the next one because there’s promise here. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

At first, I wasn't too sure I liked that there was so much emphasis on Kate's family life, but in the end, it was for the best, as it gives Kate more depth, more dimension, more challenges than a typical lone wolf agent. In the beginning, I also wondered if the book was part of a series, as some information seemed to be missing. It was not the case, we are told everything in due time, and in fact, it prevented info dumping. Kate is unlike any other spy I had ever seen, yet SECRET SERVICE is very much like the glorious spy stories of old. From British journalist and bestselling author Tom Bradby, Secret Service is a thriller that follows senior MI6 agent Kate Henderson as she races to unmask a Russian mole in the UK government. Secret Service is an espionage novel featuring Kate, an MI6 agent working the Russia Desk while also trying to manage her marriage and raise her two kids. While her team is working surveilance on the son of an Oligarch, Kate and the team discover that the PM is going to step down, which is something no one at MI6 knew. How did the Russians know this and who told them? Could there be a mole in the British government? Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. The two primary candidates for prime minister, James Ryan and Imogen Conrad, present their own complications. Ryan is a long-time establishment conservative who also happens to be a former school chum of Kate’s boss, the head of MI6. And Conrad’s right-hand man is Kate’s husband, Stuart, who finds his loyalties torn between his wife and his boss.

Kate Henderson books in order: the complete series:

The book opens in Istanbul, where Kate and her team of MI6 operatives are ready to bug a Russian oligarch’s yacht. Kate has inside intelligence that a big meeting is slated to take place on the yacht, and sure enough, the heads of Russia’s secret services show up for sit down with the oligarch. The meeting yields a bombshell: the British prime minister is going to step down in a few days and one of the leading candidates to replace him is a secret Russian asset. And even worse, there’s a Russian mole at the heart of the British government who’s helping move the plot along. In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carre draws on his experience in the British Intelligence Service. The spy story tells the tale of the international espionage ring from the point of view of a British spy, George Smiley, who wants to take one last assignment before ending his career.