Treachery begins at home Back in London after a gruelling operation in Paris, Liz Carlyle has been posted to MI5’s counter-espionage desk. Her bosses hope the new position will give her some breathing space, but they haven’t counted on the fallout from Putin’s incursions into the Ukraine. Discovering that an elusive Russian spy has entered the UK, Liz needs to track him down before he completes his fatal mission – and plunges Britain back into the fraught days of the Cold War. Meanwhile, following the revelations of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the intelligence services are in the spotlight. In response to the debate raging around privacy and security, they hire Jasminder Kapoor,...

The new installment in Stella Rimington’s series of “frighteningly authentic” espionage thrillers (Chicago Tribune) featuring the fiercely intelligent, ambitious MI5 officer Liz Carlyle. Liz has been transferred to counter-espionage—the hub of MI5 operations during the Cold War, which has been scaled back as anti-terrorism has gained priority. But there’s plenty for her to do: there are more spies operating in London in the twenty-first century than there were during the height of East-West hostilities. Even the Russians still have a large contingent, although now they spy on the international financial community and on the wealthy ex-pat oligarchs who make England their domain. In...

With her debut novel, At Risk, Stella Rimington established herself as a top-notch thriller writer, and introduced us to Liz Carlyle—a smart, impassioned MI5 intelligence officer whose talents and ambitions are counterbalanced by an abiding awareness of her job’s moral complexities. In Secret Asset, we are plunged back into her high-stakes, high-tension world. Liz has always been particularly skilled at “assessing people,” and when one of her agents reports suspicious meetings taking place at an Islamic bookshop, she trusts her instinct that a terrorist cell is at work. Her boss, Charles Wetherby, Director of Counter-Terrorism, knows to trust Liz’s instincts as well: he immediately puts...

Stella Rimington first joined Britain’s Security Service (MI5) part-time in 1965, while she was in India accompanying her husband on a posting to New Delhi. She became a full-time employee on her return to the U.K. During her career with MI5, she worked in all the main fields of the Service: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism becoming, successively, Director of all three branches. She was appointed Director-General in 1992 – the first woman to hold the post and the first Director-General whose name was publicly announced. During her tenure, she pursued a policy of greater openness for MI5, giving several public lectures and publishing a booklet about the service.

The international arms trade is about to become a national problem… In 2012, in a Middle Eastern souk, CIA agent Miles Brookhaven was attacked. At the time he was infiltrating rebel groups in the area. No one was certain if his cover had been blown or if the act was just an arbitrary attack on Westerners. Months later, the incident remains a mystery. Now, Liz Carlyle and her Counter Terrorism unit in MI5 have been charged with the task of watching the international under-the-counter arms trade. With the Arabic region in such a volatile state, the British Intelligence forces have become increasing concerned that extremist Al-Qaeda jihadis are building their power base ready to launch...

Geneva, 2012. When a Russian intelligence officer approaches MI5 with vital information about the imminent cyber-sabotage of an Anglo-American Defence programme, he refuses to talk to anyone but Liz Carlyle. But who is he, and what is his connection to the British agent? At a tracking station in Nevada, US Navy officers watch in horror as one of their unmanned drones plummets out of the sky, and panic spreads through the British and American Intelligence services. Is this a Russian plot to disable the West’s defences? Or is the threat coming from elsewhere? As Liz and her team hunt for a mole inside the MOD, the trail leads them from Geneva, to Marseilles and into a labyrinth of...

The latest thriller from the ex-Director General of MI5 sees Liz Carlyle tackle vicious terrorism in Belfast. MI5 officer Liz Carlyle is posted to Northern Ireland. From the moment she lands in Belfast, danger follows. She soon discovers that the peace process in the province is precarious. Then a source reports strange goings-on at a house on the Irish Sea owned by the Fraternity, an organisation Liz suspects of being a front for renegade former IRA men. Its head is Seamus Piggott, an Irish-American with a gun-running past. When another informant reports a plot is being hatched against the security forces, Liz and her colleague Dave Armstrong suspect Piggott is involved, along with a...

For fans of Spooks, Homeland, McMafia and The Night Manager, the latest thriller in Stella Rimington’s bestselling espionage series sees Liz Carlyle investigating a sinister Russian plot – tense, gripping and global in scope A man lies dying in a hospital in upstate Vermont. The nurses know only that he is an academic at a nearby university but they have been instructed to call the FBI should anyone visit their patient. News of this suspected Russian illegal soon reaches MI5 in London where Liz Carlyle has been contacted by a top secret source known as Mischa who is requesting a clandestine rendezvous in Berlin. Meanwhile in Brussels a Russian sleeper agent who has lived...

Офицер МИ-5 Лиз Карлайл получает приказ о срочном переводе в Северную Ирландию, где некая радикальная группировка поставила под угрозу мирный процесс. И когда исчезает один из ее подчиненных, Лиз вынуждена практически в одиночку противостоять безжалостным террористам, чьи притязания простираются далеко за пределы Ирландии.

Когда становится известно, что на территории Великобритании планируется теракт, МИ-5 поручает Лиз Карлайл выявить, кто за этим стоит и кто или что является целью террористов. Расследование приводит Карлайл в Норфолк, где части головоломки постепенно начинают складываться в страшную картину…