The Geneva Trap

Reviewed by Lucy Forde.

This is the seventh book by Stella Rimington featuring her heroine Liz Carlyle a senior operative with MI5 – budding authors are told to write about ‘what you know’ and, as the former head of MI5, Stella Rimington most certainly knows her stuff.

The plot of The Geneva Trap has two story lines, one business and the other involving Liz Carlyle’s family life; inevitably the two interweave together.

In Geneva, a Russian intelligence officer, Sorsky, approaches his British counterpart and says that he must speak to Liz Carlyle and refuses to engage with anyone else. She flies to Geneva for a rendezvous; there is a brief ‘flashback’ in the book where she remembers her first meeting of the Russian – he was a guest lecturer when she was at university and ultimately the catalyst for Liz joining the, not so, secret service.

At the rendezvous he informs Liz that there is a mole in the team dealing with a top secret operation code named ‘Clarity’ which involves hi-tech technology and unmanned drones, actually the hi-tech technology involves talking to the drone, or shouting at it when one of them starts behaving in a manner guaranteed to inflame the authorities in Oman where it has been granted permission to test. In a compromising and drunken moment another member of the Russian ‘Trade Delegation’ – euphemism for spy – Kubiak makes mention of Clarity and that it has been infiltrated by an outside force.

At home Liz’s mother’s partner Edward is having concerns regarding his daughter who has returned from a commune in France where the leaders are planning drastic and dangerous disruption of a forthcoming summit (think G8) and need funds, funds that they know Cathy has access to. When one of the ring leaders turns up at her home in Brighton to collect the money he is unaware that Edward is there and unprepared for what follows!

The two story lines come together in Marseille where Liz’s love interest Martin Seurat is dealing with the commune issue and Liz is searching for Kubiak after Sorsky has disappeared; throw in a few North Koreans and you have a scarily topical situation.

The knowledge of procedure is evident; the plots are believable – no Aston Martin car chases with gadgets – and therefore a far more realistic insight into the workings of MI5 and 6. As always I got to the end of the book and wished there could be more, not because I felt the story was left hanging – it certainly wasn’t – but because I know I have to wait a while before the next one is out. Whether you decide to read in sequence or as a one off it is certainly a good yarn.