The Bell Ringers

This riveting thriller takes place in a British dystopia in the near future, where a seemingly benign system of government and corporate surveillance of computers, cell phones, bank records, etc., has made it possible for a corrupt prime minister to abridge civil liberties to a terrifying point without Parliament's awareness or any alarm in the general public. When people protest, they're, with terrible ease, made to seem like deranged conspiracy theorists--or else they meet with fatal accidents. The world Porter paints is familiar and convincing, his plotting and pacing are tight as a drum, and John Lee's performance is impeccable. He never overplays, he never distracts; he simply inhabits each character and makes you believe. This is a marvelous and frightening entertainment. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 7, 2009
In Porter's outstanding near-future thriller, David Eyam, the former head of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, is killed by a bomb in Colombia that was apparently aimed at others. His recently estranged close friend and former colleague in the spook business, Kate Lockhart, is surprised to learn she's the main beneficiary of Eyam's will. Her suspicions that the story behind his death is more complex than officially reported are heightened when Eyam's lawyer is gunned down soon after thugs break into his office. While the basic plot—an attempt to uncover a broad government conspiracy against daunting odds—is familiar, Porter (Brandenburg Gate
) invests it with urgency and power by taking current legislation drawn up to combat terrorism and projecting how it would play out if special interests and unscrupulous leaders used it to destroy the privacy of individuals. Shaken U.S. readers will wonder how much of the fiction might soon become fact on this side of the Atlantic.