PRESENT DANGER

This is the fifth in the series featuring MI5 intelligence officer, Liz Carlyle. After forays in Britain, Russia and The Middle East, Liz is despatched to Northern Island to investigate a group of Republican renegades known as The Fraternity, headed by an American Irishman, Seamus Piggott and manned by ex-IRA men who want to continue with the atrocities as if the Peace Process never existed.

Along with colleague Dave Armstrong, Liz sets out to sort out The Fraternity but Dave gets captured, the French Intelligence become involved and Liz is no longer sure whom she can trust. When,

Stella Rimington has an easy style of writing that ensures you keep the pages turning. Knowing her erstwhile profession, as head of MI5, I can’t help but feel there must be a lot of personal propaganda in the book but that is perhaps doing her an injustice.

In any case, it does not really matter because the plot is well-constructed, the characterisation plausible and all threads of the story are neatly tied up. Plus, and possibly because this is a woman writer, the emotional angles of the various protagonists are explored in more depth than in many action thrillers.

I have not the first four Liz Carlyle books but I shall make sure I do so now.