Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

There’s a lot of material here—perhaps too much, and Bradby often loses the thread. Some early tense action gives way to a slow-moving investigation, as Kate and her team try to suss out the clues, overt and subtle, that can point out the traitor: 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:Senior MI6 officer Kate Henderson, the heroine of this tense spy thriller from Bradby ( The White Russian), receives information from a trusted source that Russia’s three top foreign intelligence chiefs will meet in Istanbul on the super-yacht of a billionaire Russian oligarch. Surveillance of the meeting reveals the impending resignation of the U.K. prime minister and the possibility of a mole, code-named Viper, within the Secret Intelligence Service. The investigation threatens to implicate a number of high-ranking British government officials, including Kate’s boss, Ian Granger, and education secretary Imogen Conrad, Kate’s husband’s boss. Or is it misinformation planted by Kate’s source to frame her as the counterspy? The author reveals a rarely seen facet of secret agents: the domestic side. Not a clichéd Jane Bond, Kate is a mother to two teenagers, daughter to a spiteful mother sliding into dementia, and wife to a civil servant who may be working for a traitor. Ops go sideways, betrayals abound, and good people die. Bradby keeps the reader guessing to the last. Fans of cerebral spycraft in the vein of le Carré will enjoy this outing. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management. (Nov.) 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? Kate and her team set out to vet the two contenders who are in the running for British PM with information that one of them could be the mole, Codename: Viper. Kate must put all at risk, including her life and the lives of her team to get to the truth.

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. A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read. 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. Tom Bradby has created Kate Henderson, family woman and chief of the Russia section at MI6. A tip-off leads her and her team to begin a hazardous operation which reveals both possible Russian interference in the appointment of a new Prime Minister, that there may be a Russian agent among the candidates and that someone is leaking secrets to the Russians. The plot moves along quite nicely, the who-can-I-trust stuff is nicely done and Tom Bradby writes pretty well much of the time. It does get a bit clunky in places, and although the dialogue is generally convincing, characters do tend to lapse into pretty stilted speeches rather regularly. Bradby is also no stranger to a cliché, which gets a bit much at times with sentences like, “I’d like to bury my head in the sand, but I need to go home and face the music.” I loved all the characters from spies to Govt officials and Kate, the main character, was ruthless when needed but also had a gentle, human sideKate 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. 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.

I write this on the day after John le Carré died. He was the undisputed master of the spy genre and it's unfair to compare this book with say, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but unavoidable when Smiley is so much on my mind. The story itself revolves around MI-6 operations as they try to ascertain who all the players are that were discussed in the overheard Russian conversation, but unfortunately knowing that there is a mole leads them to a lot of frustrating moments since no one is sure who it is and whom they can trust. But while there is a spy whose identify must be ascertained, Kate also has a home life that involves two teenagers, a mother with Alzheimer’s, and two family members – her husband and her aunt – who are also employed by the government. Kate is trying to figure out how to balance home life with the overtime work being required of her as well as short notice trips abroad. When she became a minister, she was very voluble, particularly about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, which had happened a few years before she joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. She took a very tough line, demanding stiffer sanctions and actually getting them imposed on a wider section of the president’s inner circle. … She’s barely spoken publicly about Russia since.” The author reveals a rarely seen facet of secret agents: the domestic side. Not a clichéd Jane Bond, Kate is a mother to two teenagers, daughter to a spiteful mother sliding into dementia, and wife to a civil servant who may be working for a traitor. Ops go sideways, betrayals abound, and good people die. Bradby keeps the reader guessing to the last. Fans of cerebral spycraft in the vein of le Carré will enjoy this outing.”— Publishers Weekly A Russian agent has come forward with news that the PM has been the victim of the greatest misinformation play in the history of MI6. It’s run out of a special KGB unit that exists for one purpose alone: to process the intelligence from ‘Agent Dante’, a mole right at the heart of MI6 in London.Kate also has a past. She spent time in Moscow as a student and met and fell in love with a man named Sergei. She didn’t act on those feelings, being already committed to Stuart, but she’s never forgotten them. That was 20 years ago. Now Sergei has turned up in London at a diplomatic event she attends and Kate finds that those long-buried feelings still simmer. This feisty, pacey thriller by Tom Bradby has it all - nervy gangsters, crooked politicians, gutsy cops and a sexy moll. It is also blessed with excellent timing....A top-notch piece of crime writing" — Press Association (UK), on Blood Money From the Publisher She continues: ‘They go behind us and around us and beyond us to the people and the country at large, whipping up hostility and division and dissent, their tentacles reaching down a thousand different alleyways.’