{"id":8418,"date":"2020-03-02T06:55:46","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T11:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8418"},"modified":"2020-03-02T06:55:46","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T11:55:46","slug":"secret-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8418","title":{"rendered":"****Secret Service"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Tom Bradby<\/a> \u2013 This new political thriller feels like it could be \u201cripped from today\u2019s headlines.\u201d Deception, betrayal, and the ethical vulnerability that compromise Western political leaders are here turned into a gripping, all-too-believable tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradby\u2019s protagonist, Kate Henderson, head of MI6\u2019s Russia\nDesk is an experienced operative, with a small team of trusted subordinates, a\ncolleague perpetually trying to undermine her, and a boss whose private\nthoughts are kept behind a locked door. She has a loving and very patient\nspouse who covers for her when she suddenly must be on a plane somewhere, two\nteenagers who think they should be the center of her attention, and a mother full\nof resentments who lives in a care home near\u2014too-near\u2014the Hendersons\u2019 London\nhome, believable relationships all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate also has a past. She spent time in Moscow as a student\nand met and fell in love with a man named Sergei. She didn\u2019t act on those feelings,\nbut she\u2019s never forgotten them. That was twenty years ago, and when Sergei\nturns up in London, Kate finds those long-buried feelings still simmer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sergei feeds her some startling and actionable information\nabout an impending meeting of top Russian intelligence operatives. Kate doesn\u2019t\nreveal the suspicious source of her information, and, a bit skeptically, her\nsuperiors approve her plan to eavesdrop on this parley. The Russians discuss\nthe shocking information that the UK Prime Minister will resign soon, and one\nof the top candidates to replace him is in the pay of Russian foreign\nintelligence. Is this a replay\nof the late 1960s IRL<\/a>? Disinformation? If not, which candidate is it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The changes in Western-Russian espionage over the years make\nthis exciting reading. Bradby sums it up nicely when Kate says, \u201cIn the old\ndays, it seemed like a fair match, didn\u2019t it? . . . As long as we could spot\ntheir feints and sleights of hand, we could go home reasonably secure . . . It\nisn\u2019t like that any more. They go behind us and around us and beyond us to the\npeople and the country at large, whipping up hostility and division and\ndissent, their tentacles reaching down a thousand different alleyways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradby does a good job controlling his narrative and, without ever becoming tedious or heavy-handed, he subtly helps you remember who knows what, who trusts whom and with what information, and how much each person knows. No one tells all the truth, and the book\u2019s title, Secret Service<\/a><\/em>, has multiple meanings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s plenty of action to keep the pages flying too, as some of those secrets prove deadly. Bradby doesn\u2019t let you forget for a moment that the Russians will happily send a \u201cwet team\u201d to harm Kate or her family, in London or anywhere else in the world she may be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all, it\u2019s a story to immerse yourself in, and one that may make you raise an eyebrow when next you hear about some major Western politician\u2019s unaccountable behavior. No naming names here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Jackmac34 for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tom Bradby \u2013 This new political thriller feels like it could be \u201cripped from today\u2019s headlines.\u201d Deception, betrayal, and the ethical vulnerability that compromise Western political leaders are here turned into a gripping, all-too-believable tale. Bradby\u2019s protagonist, Kate Henderson, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Secret Service - A Russian spy high in the UK government? Angling to become the next prime minister? That would explain a few things. Tom Brady\u2019s book lays out a scenario that, alas, doesn\u2019t seem too far-fetched. A good read in today\u2019s times! ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[193,40,268,126],"tags":[1716,1715],"class_list":["post-8418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-politics","category-reading-2","tag-secret-service","tag-tom-bradby"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Russian-Dolls.jpg?fit=426%2C453&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2bM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8420,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8418\/revisions\/8420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}