The Moscow Sleepers

September 3, 2018
The visit of a suspected Russian spy to a patient in a Vermont hospice kicks off Rimington’s fascinating 10th Liz Carlyle novel (after 2016’s Breaking Cover). Alerted by the FBI, MI5 agent Carlyle in the U.K. connects the incident to a shady private school in Suffolk that has recently changed hands. Once a training academy for the British elite, Bartholomew Manor College now enrolls only boys with advanced computer skills from Eastern Europe. Liz soon clashes with the school’s headmaster, whose wishy-washy answers do little to ease her suspicions that the school is a training ground for hackers under the direction of Moscow. A poignant subplot concerns the fate of sleeper agents who are set on a life path by Moscow, but then forgotten about with changes in personnel and administration back in the home country. Series fans will be pleased that Liz appears to have a new beau following the death of her former lover a few books ago. While the action flags at times, Rimington, a former director general of MI5, makes fine use of her knowledge of spycraft. Agent: Georgina Capel, Capel & Land (U.K.).

September 1, 2018
Those pesky Russians, who just don't know when to quit, are at it again in this sedate 10th adventure for Liz Carlyle.Whatever changed when Liz moved from MI5 to MI6 (Breaking Cover, 2016), it wasn't the activity level of the FSB, the Russian intelligence service. According to Mischa Bebchuk, the army officer-turned-CIA informant, his brother Boris, an FSB officer, is even more anxious than usual because there are rumors of a leak close to the service, something Mischa naturally knows more about than anyone else. What does this wave of anxiety have to do with Lars Petersen, a University of Vermont professor who died shortly after an unusually chatty (and hushed) visit from somebody signing the hospice register as Ohlson, a self-professed old friend from Montreal who was the first person who'd ever come to see him? The link may run through Hamburg's Freitang School, a gymnasium for immigrant children whose head, Irma Nimitz, seems to be preparing her charges for something her husband, Dieter, who's with the European Commission for Refugees, thinks may be more than a little iffy--his fears echoing those of Florence Girling, an assistant at Bartholomew Manor College back in Shropshire. Sadly, Ohlson soon vanishes from the story; Dieter spends most of his time fretting; Boris remains offstage; Irma remains in the shadows; and Liz's most decisive intervention is to get caught snooping around the headmaster's office at Bartholomew Manor. Amid the general lassitude, only Miss Girling flickers to unsteady life as Her Majesty's counterintelligence services mostly stand by and watch as a clever cyberterrorist plot trips over its own feet rather than being brought down by their efforts.Proof, if any were needed by now, that Rimington is better at worldbuilding than storytelling. The threat is real, the bureaucratic infighting sharply detailed, the tradecraft circumspect. The only thing left shortchanged is the plot.

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October 15, 2018
This is espionage with a capital E, as Rimington draws from her years as Britain's highest-ranking spy, adding cybersecurity issues from today's headlines to bring readers the tenth Liz Carlyle thriller (following Breaking Cover, 2016). A stranger's visit to a dying college professor in Vermont trips an FBI alarm, and the agency forwards their concerns to MI5 in London. Counterterrorist agent Carlyle and her colleagues are assigned to the case, and a visit to Montreal makes them aware of a global cyberconspiracy originating in Moscow and operating in Germany, the UK, and North America through an extensive sleeper network. There are white-knuckle encounters in Berlin and Moscow as attempts are made to infiltrate the Russian operation, and the trail eventually leads Carlyle and her team back to England, where a bizarre spy school is suspected of training Middle Eastern refugees in the darker uses of the internet. Recommend this series to fans of classic espionage in the le Carr� mold.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)