At Risk by Stella Rimington

At Risk by Stella Rimington (2005)
Read: November 2011

I picked this up at school as I enjoy watching Spooks and all that, so thought a spy novel written by the ex-head of MI5 might be written along similar lines. And it was. Cue young, female intelligence officer who is trying to make her way through tracking a potential threat, dealing with the tacky lines of her counter-part in 6 and finishing an affair with a married man.

The story was OK but it didn't have as many layers as your standard Spooks episode. I found the sub-plot of the affair unneccessary at first, and then when the book concluded without much more of a word on it it was clear that it really was surplas to story requirements. It was relatively clear where the story was going from the start - there weren't too many twists in the tale. Probably the most interesting aspect of the book was the times when the protagonists thought processes were being run through on the page - seeing how an agent tries to think back and put together little details to solve a case.

This was an easy read that passed the time on the bus. I don't often read glossy fiction, but if I go for a spy novel again I hope it has a bit more depth and mystery than this one.

number9dream by David Mitchell

number9dream by David Mitchell (2001)
Read: November 2011

Picked up last year at the AUC Tahrir bookfair for a bargain price in their off-sales section. I thought I'd get it as Cloud Atlas was an interesting read. Cloud Atlas was my first go at fiction in a while and it was a nice challenge - not your trashy sort of stuff.

This though was more of a challenge and at times was hard to find where I was in the story. The story was set in Japan and there descriptions of the locations were really nice; the pod, video store and the station. The little bits of dialogue between him and the girl were really sweet and you could feel their awkwardness in establishing a relationship over the phone.


I did find this book difficult to get through and there were times when I struggled to follow what was happening. The story broke into different strands at times and it took me a while after raeding to digest which bits where a dream, which reality and where they fit into the overarching story. Maybe I'm not as cut out for challenging fiction as I like to think!

Into Suez by Stevie Davies

Into Suez by Stevie Davies (2010)
Read: November 2011

This was recommended by the Grauniad when it came out and it sounded good and quite up my street so I asked for it when it came out. After reading Map of Love, with its jumping timeline narratives I really didn't want another "look at the present and understand the past" type book. I opened this up and it was just that - eekk! But after the firts chapter I was turned round and was hooked. I finished within the week that I was in Dahab and am really pleased that I managed to get a copy of this.

Something about this story made it so more readable that the last book. It just didn't compare. The two time periods are first when the husband is stationed in Cairo and the wife and young daughter come out to join him. At this time the wife meets and befriends another military wife. The second part of the tale is the adult daughter now revisiting Egypt for the first time with her own daughter. She is trying to find out more about her mother and father and so she meets her mothers friend. The stories tied in well, as the mother gets to know her new friend in Egypt, so does her daughter now get to know the friend, and through that her mother, in the present day. The awkwardness returns in the present between the daughter and her mother's friend, as it did in the past when the truth about her mother's relationship with her came out and her mother and father's relationship broke down.

There are definite sad moments in this book and I emphasised with both the wife and her husband in their tale. It did the period justice and the descriptions of Ish (Ismalia) and the tour and time there reflected well.

A really good book - so glad that I got it and that I finally got round to reading it!