Double Agent: From the bestselling author of Secret Service

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This is a fast paced easily read well plotted story that will have you turning in circles to find if we really do have a traitor and will Kate survive the ride.

As with Secret Service, Bradby excels in his portrayal of the interplay of personal and professional relationships in the secret service, reminding me of Len Deighton’s Bernard Samson novels. A credible, twisty spy thriller, it was powered along by a clever plot and a strong cast of characters. I read this with The Pigeonhole and it wasn't helped by having one stave every two days, plus reading two other books which came out every day. 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.Shaken by the personal betrayals and tragedies detailed in Secret Service, Kate is not in a good place at the beginning of the new novel and things only become worse for her when a high ranking Russian intelligence figure offers proof of the Prime Minister’s true allegiance in exchange for political asylum and protection. It follows on directly from Secret Service and I would strongly recommend that you read Secret Service first. 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. Such are her management skills that she deals with the most disconcerting events with insouciance, which perhaps detracts from the excitement one might expect. She wants to spend some time with her children Fiona and Gus, and arranges to take them for a weekend in Venice, which also allows them to meet up with their father, who was previously outed as a Russian spy, and banished from the UK, and after defecting to Russia, he now resides in Moscow in a run down high rise apartment block where his life has definitely taken a turn for the worse.

Such is the world of secret operations within a political regime while a totalitarian state will always have an advantage. But as I mentioned before, there's is a resolution regarding Kate's story, but still, it's the THE conclusion I was expecting. The end result is a first class piece of spy fiction that kept very happily engaged from beginning to end. This would have been an absurd storyline in the context of the immediate zeitgeist of post-Soviet Russia.It’s an opportunity to meet her husband Stuart who betrayed both his wife and his country, and is now living in Moscow. MI6 senior intelligence officer Kate Henderson’s work life balance has hit the buffers since we last met up with her in Secret Service. This technique creates two problems: firstly it is almost impossible to appreciate the novel without reading the prequel beforehand and, secondly, the plot becomes somewhat drawn-out.

In exchange he offers Kate conclusive evidence to prove the identity of a live Russian agent at the very heart of the British Government.One scene set in Berlinhas guns drawn and a brawl happen 20 metres from Angela Merkel's front door, and the author doesn't seem to realise this, or realise that there is always a police presence there. He never meanders, never wastes time, which allows the story and characters to flow naturally with good pace.

Spy novelists inevitably fall into two camps; those that dazzle with their insider knowledge of duplicitous governments and their rogue agencies - so much so that they forget the compact of mutual understanding with their reader. Having said all that; I might be tempted to try book 3 in the series; they read well and though we're short on interesting characters at least there's enough left hanging to persue it. I love these because Tom Bradby beautifully balances the edge-of-your-seat thriller elements with the spycraft and political infighting.The defector has proof of the PM involved in a sordid scandal--a video supposedly used to blackmail him into Russian service decades prior--and a financial paper trail that undeniably links him to the Russians, but his motives are anything but clear.