June 1, 2020
In this sequel to Secret Service (which has TV executives in hot pursuit), senior MI6 agent Kate Henderson believes that she has evidence that Britain's prime minister is a Russian agent. But what are the intentions of the Russian defector who has offered her this evidence--after kidnapping her in Venice? And is there another mole in her department (she's already scotched one)? From CWA Steel Dagger and Historical Crime short-listed novelist/screenwriter Bradby.
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Starred review from September 1, 2020
Spies have family lives, too, and sometimes those lives get mired in the same muddles that distress those of us without cloaks and daggers in our closets. When we last saw MI6 officer Kate Henderson (Secret Service, 2019), her personal and professional lives were in free fall: her husband, Stuart, had been outed as an adulterer and found guilty of giving secrets to the Russians, and Kate had been outmaneuvered in her attempt to prove that the newly elected British prime minister was a longtime Russian agent. Now, suffering from depression and trying to deal with her two disaffected teens, Kate is thrown back into the middle of the case that caused her downfall. A Russian secret service honcho offers more incriminating evidence against the PM (including a sex tape) in exchange for help in defecting to the West. So begins another elaborate cat-and-mouse game (with Kate unsure of which role she is playing) that eventually involves Stuart, the Russian with whom Kate almost had an affair decades earlier, Kate's colleagues (all with agendas of their own), and the certainly perfidious PM. Bradby masterfully combines textured psychological drama with a rip-roaring plot that boasts several dizzying switchbacks along the way to a genuinely shocking conclusion. "It's over," Kate says at the end. "It's all over now." But is it, we wonder, recalling Kate's earlier declaration that "what we don't understand will always be greater than what we do".(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
September 15, 2020
Kate Henderson returns, still on the trail of a high-level traitor in British government. Henderson, head of MI6's Russian desk, has reason to believe James Ryan, the British Prime Minister, is a Russian sleeper agent, but she has been unable to prove it. In her investigation of him, however, she does discover that her husband, Stuart, is a Russian agent who's betrayed her as well. Stuart has escaped to Russia, and Henderson's world has suffered mightily: She can't sleep, and even her subordinates are urging her to get therapy; her children are manifesting behavior disorders, and she's been saddled with a new assistant who may be spying on her for MI5, the British security service. When she arranges a trip to Venice so her kids can briefly visit with their father, she is secretly contacted by Mikhail Borodin, who claims to be seeking to defect. Borodin explains that he and his father, Igor, former chief of Russia's foreign intelligence service, are victims of a GRU power grab and are at risk of death or imprisonment. He offers to exchange a kompromat video of Ryan in the company of underage girls for refuge in England. From that point onward, Kate oscillates between mental and familial crises at home and her need to convince her government to accept Borodin's deal at work. There's a nice set piece in Berlin when a planned defection fails, or perhaps was never meant to succeed, but this installment of Kate's quest is largely lacking in kinetic energy, though there's much discussion and political maneuvering. How a modern intelligence service could permit an employee so clearly in crisis to continue to make momentous decisions is not addressed, and overall there's a sort of shaggy imprecision in Kate's MI6, so it's not a big surprise that the evidence of Ryan's guilt is suppressed or corrupted, and Kate's quest has plenty of scope for a third volume. Bradby's fans will welcome his heroine's return even though this installment is a little flat.
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November 9, 2020
In Bradby’s engrossing sequel to 2019’s Secret Service, MI6 agent Kate Henderson rides point on a career-jeopardizing investigation of Prime Minister James Ryan. The case centers on a Mikhail Borodin, Russia’s former intelligence chief’s son, who has offered Kate a lurid tape showing Ryan molesting underage girls in Kosovo 25 years earlier, evidence that the Russians are supposedly using as blackmail. In exchange for the video and accompanying record of bribe payments, Borodin wants to be allowed to defect, along with his family. But is the video authentic? And what might be the political consequences of a British leader being taken down in such disgrace? Meanwhile, Kate must navigate a slew of personal problems—issues with her two teenage kids, a difficult mother, and a new junior agent, Suzy Spencer, whose bold behavior is suspiciously well-meaning. The tantalizingly ambiguous ending will leave the reader wondering what’s in store for Kate. Bradby does a fine job balancing the professional with the personal. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management.