At Risk
Written by Stella Rimington
Narrated by Kate Reading
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Intelligence officer Liz Carlyle has had to prove herself in countless ways as she's come up through the ranks of the traditionally all-male world of Britain's Security Service, MI5. But this announcement marks the start of an operation that will test all her hard-won knowledge and experience-and her intelligence and courage-as nothing has before. Having analyzed information from her agents, she realizes that there is indeed an imminent terrorist threat. She may even have the invisible's point of entry. But what she cannot draw out of all the "chatter" is the invisible's identity and intended target.
With each passing hour, the danger increases. As the desperate hunt continues, it becomes clear that Liz's intuitive skills, her ability to get deep inside her enemy's head, are her best hope for tracking down the terrorist. But will that be enough? And can she succeed in time to avert a disaster?
Drawing from her experience as the first woman director general of MI5, Stella Rimington gives us a story that is smart, tautly drawn, and suspenseful from first to last. At Risk is a stunning debut novel that plunges us headlong into today's shadowy and fever-pitched battle between terrorism and Intelligence.
From the Hardcover edition.
Stella Rimington
Dame Stella Rimington joined the Security Service (MI5) in 1968. During her career she worked in all the main fields of the Service: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. She was appointed Director General in 1992, the first woman to hold the post. She has written her autobiography and six Liz Carlyle novels. She lives in London and Norfolk.
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Reviews for At Risk
188 ratings15 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I picked this up because of her job as head of MI5. I think it is her first book and half way through I wanted to grip her and send her on a good creative writing course. Maybe that is what happened as the first half of the book is all about setting the scene and involved a lot of tedious detail about clothes and food and possibly even furniture - and is far too long. Then the story picks up with some real tension and pace and a lot of cleverness. I have friends in this part of Norfolk and so I enjoyed the way the plot was rooted in the places and countryside.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've had my eye on Rimington's Liz Carlyle books for a while - how often do you get to read a spy novel written by a spy?
You can tell that the author knows the real business of intelligence work: her characters are doing a job. They have real-people worries, and real-people christmas parties (with 50 rubber David Shayler masks). Intelligence work is also the result of a team effort - every person bringing their own little piece of the jigsaw.
The story follows Liz Carlyle, as she tries to locate an "invisible" - an enemy agent dangerous because he or she has a legal right to reside in the target country, so is very difficult to spot. Not only must Liz identify the "invisible", but also the target. Something is about to go down - but what?
The best part of the book for me, was right at the end. Rimington has not taken the easy way out of making the enemy simply easy automata: people have reasons for what they do, and sometimes those are reasons that you can sympathise with, or understand. Sometimes not. Threat is not always about big plans by evil geniuses; sometimes, the threat is small, and human, and tragic - but no less dangerous. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A decent, if not especially memorable, thriller. Distinguished partly by the fact that the author, Stella Rimington, was the first head of the real MI5. The interplay between the MI5 and MI6, friendly enough but with some sharp elbows, is probably based in the not-entirely-fictional tension between the two services.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was the first novel by Stella Rimington, retired former Director General of MI5, and introduces Liz Carlyle, the intelligence officer who will go on to be Rimington’s recurring protagonist. In the Author’s note at the end of the book, Rimington acknowledges that some aspects of Carlyle’s character are autobiographical, but urges readers to recognise that the book is fiction, and that there are, of course, limits to what an author, however well informed, can release about procedural issues.Liz Carlyle is certainly a very empathetic and plausible character. She is also far from prefect, and is as subject to irritability and occasional disdain for colleagues as the rest of us. As the novel opens she is in her early thirties, and working as part of a team monitoring suspected Moslem fundamentalist radicals operating in the United Kingdom. The book was published in 2004, so came in the wake of the 9/11 attack and the subsequent ‘War on Terror’, but preceded the 7/7 attacks in London in 2005.Rimington develops her plot carefully, following several different characters in turn. Reduced to its barest bones, the story concerns an attempt by a Pakistani man assisted by a disaffected young English woman who converted to Islam a few years earlier and has been thoroughly radicalised, to commit an attack in mainland Britain. The story follows their respective paths to East Anglia, while simultaneously recounting the work of the intelligence services as they pick up hints of a forthcoming attack.Over the years there have been two separate approaches to the espionage novel. One the one hand, there is the James Bond school of glamour and hi-tech wizardry, although in recent years the more pedestrian approach, founded in shabby reality has predominated. Rimington is sited firmly in the latter school, although she does not plumb the darker recesses of the human psyche to the same extent as, say, John le Carré. She does, however, operate with the same patina of utter credibility. Her plots are, ultimately, rather less exciting than those of Ian Fleming or Desmond Bagley, but are perhaps all the better for that.This is certainly a strong opening to a new series, and Liz Carlyle emerges as an engaging central character, about whom the reader wants to learn more.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Well written and true to life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liz Carlyle works for MI5 and receives information that an "invisible", i.e. some one travelling on a British passport, has entered the country intending to carry out a terrorist plot. Liz teams up with representative from MI6, the police and, by the end, most other agencies/arms of government to try to identify the terrorists and their target.This is the first in a series and I can see the there are threads left for further development, including Liz's love life and (I imagine) the asset codenamed Marzipan. I found this generally enjoyable, although it could have been bit shorter and more streamlined. There were lots of interesting characters, like Perry and Anne, Denzil, the police officers who failed to check the holiday bungalow etc, but they popped up only briefly and then we were on to the next thing. Was the MI5 agent in Norfolk working for Melvin Eastman? What became of Eastman and his crime empire?I'm keen to read the next in the series.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I really enjoyed At Risk, Stella Rimington's first novel in the Liz Carlyle series. Unfortunately, I'd begun reading Rimington with the 8th book in the series, didn't think it was very good but took a chance at checking out an earlier entry. I'm glad I did.
At Risk is a very good spy thriller with a plot that, sadly, seems all too real. I won't go into details, but suffice to say that it's a great story that could be taken from current headlines. Rimington has tons of credibility, writes well, and does a good job with dialogue (much better than Close Call).
It now looks like I have 6 more of the Liz Carlyle series to absorb. I'm interested in seeing how the characters develop along the way and if Close Call was an aberration or a slide into mediocrity for Ms. Rimington. If you're into spy novels, though, this one is a good one! - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In diesem Thriller geht es um einen geplanten Anschlag islamistischer Terroristen in England. Zum einen spielt die Geheimdienstchefin Liz eine wichtige Rolle, zum anderen die beiden Attentäter, eine Engländerin und ein Tadschike. Mir gefällt sehr gut, dass die Figuren bis in die Nebenfiguren hinein sehr interessant dargestellt und gekennzeichnet sind. Zunächst ist das Buch etwas langatmig und auch vorhersehbar, da man ja sowohl die Schritte der Ermittler, als die der Terroristen kennt bzw. zu kennen glaubt. Im Verlauf der Handlung wird es aber spannend, v.a. da einem die Handelnden Figuren nahe kommen.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Liz Carlyle is an intelligence officer in MI5. She's working on a case of an "invisible", a potential terrorist who is a British citizen and much harder to find because he or she has the right look, mannerisms, documents, everything that might otherwise be a clue. Hampering her focus are a colleague from MI6 who thinks he's Mr. Cool and a married man with whom she has been having an affair, but who now wants to get a divorce and ruin her life. Fortunately Liz is the best and makes the connections no one else can see.I was interested in reading this first novel in the Liz Carlyle series mainly because of the author. Stella Rimington has been the director of counter-subversion, counter-espionage, and counter-terrorism in succession, as well as the first woman director general of MI5 from 1992-1996. She first came to my attention, however, as the controversial chair of the 2011 Booker Prize committee. I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity, but I found the writing dull, and I didn't understand why the protagonist's personal life was brought into the story, but then dropped half way through the book. I'm not in a hurry to seek out the next book in the series.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cracking debut novel by a former head of MI5. First in the Liz Carlyle series. Terrorists Faraj Mansoor of Pakistan and UK citizen and Muslim convert Jean d'Aubigny target an RAF base CO and his family. A real page-turner.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A competently plotted and smoothly written page-turner that keeps the tension until the final twist. But don't imagine that the identity of the author (former head of MI5) will add any particular insight.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I really enjoyed the writing style and the story. Rimmington, because of her former employment, brought authenticity to the story. The interactions between different law enforcement groups and individual officers rang true as did her depiction of how the opinion of the woman (main character) in such a situation can be overlooked - one suspects this was written from personal experience. The antithesis to many of the action spy novels we are used to - more comparable with what happens in real life situations - lots of intelligence and analysis in assessing the situation.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A great, fast read, energetic and not overdrawn. Interesting central character. Enough realism to be believable, and thank god the author spares us endless car chases and karate-chops. Draws one in both for the window into the intelligence services and insight into the particular challenges of a woman who finds herself suited to that life.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An excellent (fictional) story of everyday counter-terrorism by MI5, written with the authenticity (it seems anyway) only someone from the inside could have provided (Stella Rimington was Head of MI5). The settings in North Norfolk particularly interested me, as someone who lived there for 12 years.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A female MI5 agent is trying to find a suspected terrorist who is attempting to enter England for purposes unknown. She must also try to find the "invisible" (person who blends in) helping him and determine what their target and purpose are. There are quite a few characters to keep track of and it can get confusing at times, but overall it's a good espionage thriller, and reads a bit like a good episode of the "MI-5" tv series.