Cool spy novel with throwbacks to Cold-War era tension. This was a highly complex read with lots of details and connecting characters to unpack from sleeper cells in lazy Vermont college towns to Russian contacts, to schools for refugees, to East German era sleepers who were implanted in the west but never really used. Or were they? Who is working for who and how do all of these pieces fit together? Needless to say, this was a book that was really hard to put down.

Author Stella Remington’s background working in this field is apparent in the technical aspects of the writing. I found myself completely engrossed, wondering where this tale of espionage was going next, who was secretly betraying whom, and when they were going to get caught.

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. ( )

I remember that when the Berlin Wall came down, and the Russian suzerainty over the Warsaw Pact countries dissolved, some commentators speculated that the spy novel was more or less obsolete as a consequence.

Obviously, subsequent events demonstrated that nothing could be further from the truth, and the various intelligence services, both in the West and the former Soviet demesne are busier than ever, prompting a commensurate explosion in the spy fiction genre. Old hands such as John le Carre merely moved the focus of their novels away from the traditional Cold War to embrace the tensions emerging in the former Soviet republics, and then the War Against Terror.

Stella Rimington wasn’t writing spy novels back in the Cold War period – she was living the life in her role as Director General of MI5, a provenance that naturally imparts a strong assumed verisimilitude to the novels she has written since her retirement. Certainly, her protagonist Liz Carlyle is very capable, likeable and above all plausible. While she can call upon a fair degree of technical support from her team, she does not exist in James Bond’s product endorsement world, and has to rely upon her own resourcefulness.

As it happens, the plot in her latest novel seems to be bringing us back to the cold war. As it opens, MI5 and MI6 are still disinterring the full ramifications of the outcome of Rimington’s previous novel, in which a Russian spy cell involving deep-placed sleeper agents was uncovered. It now appears that the network extending further than previously believed, and the British intelligent services and their American counterparts are trying to round up the final participants. Meanwhile, a German official working in the European Union Commission in Brussels has been living a double life for years, and is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the burden that his secret is placing upon him. Liz Carlyle finds herself and her team called upon to intervene as they receive intelligence from reliable sources that suggest an extensive cybersecurity threat is being developed.

Rimington’s experience enables her to deploy a range of frighteningly contemporary issues, giving this novel has a vivid topicality. ( )

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This follows on directly from the plot of the ninth instalment, and if you have just read that one (as I have), you have to plough through a fair amount of recapitulation of the plot of that novel. There is a certain amount of repetition within this instalment itself, as well as a scene bemoaning the fate of Jasminder (from the previous book), which would be lost on anyone who hadn't read "Breaking Cover".

Having said all that, I enjoyed this instalment, especially Liz's relationship with Pearson, and Bruno's exciting extraction from Moscow. The plot seemed a bit far-fetched, although this is addressed to a certain extent in the final chapters. I found the storyline concerning the Russian sleeper agent in Brussels interesting; his motivation (or lack thereof) was thoughtfully depicted.

Are we still awaiting the discovery of the "French couple" referred to in book 9, or is Brussels an approximation for France? ( )