So much rubbish was written when the Cold War ended that it would be difficult to single out this or that absurd thesis as exceptionally egregious. Readers with long memories, however, may have a nominee: the hand-wringing over the future of spy fiction. Never mind the End of History! Those fears have proved to be groundless, and for many reasons. (How delicious that this week, not long after the finale of 24‘s last season—centered on Russian perfidy—the FBI should announce the arrest of a ring of Russian sleeper agents in the United States.) In fact, spy fiction is flourishing, from the historical espionage of Alan Furst to the unceasing flow of post-9/11 tales, many of them puffed up, alas, by a sense of infinite superiority. (The object of scorn varies with the politics of the author: it may be the mostly American knaves and fools who prattle on about the “war on terror,” or the deluded liberals who pretend that the war doesn’t exist.)
Dead Line is the fourth novel by Stella Rimington, former director-general of MI5, the British intelligence agency responsible for counterintelligence and counterterrorism. Rimington, the first woman to occupy that position, wrote a memoir about her work (Open Secret) before turning to fiction. Although women have long excelled in the mystery genre, few would show up on a must-read list of spy fiction, which has largely remained a male preserve. Rimington’s distinctive perspective—as an insider, as a woman—is the reason she’s worth reading. And although sentence-by-sentence her writing is merely serviceable, she has created a very engaging series protagonist.
Liz Carlyle of MI5 has little in common with the swaggering figures who dominate spy fiction. She is smart and, in her own understated way, quite tough. But she is also far less remote from the human quotidian than her male counterparts tend to be. A recurring device in Rimington’s novels is to show Liz dealing with a new twist in terrorist intrigue at one moment, then firmly responding to yet another instance of male condescension, then dealing with some personal concern (should she go out with this fellow, for instance) that links her with countless women who will never need to foil a diabolical plot to derail a conference that might, just might, lead to a breakthrough in the Middle East (the scenario of Dead Line.) If you like Liz Carlyle in this book, you’ll want to catch up on the three preceding ones—and then you’ll be ready for the next installment, already published in the UK, when it crosses the Atlantic.
In just about every respect, Jeffrey Stephens’ Targets of Deception is at the other end of the spectrum from Stella Rimington’s book. Stephens’ novel was first self-published in 2007, as The Portofino Deception, and now appears from Variance. Rimington is published by Knopf. Her protagonist is the down-to-earth Liz Carlyle, very much a team player in the British intelligence establishment. Stephens’ hero is Jordan Sandor, a prematurely retired CIA agent (but is he really retired?) with legendary exploits to his credit and a well-earned reputation for independence. Rimington deplores what she regards as American excesses and casts a cold eye on Israel; Stephens deplores soft-headed liberal media. If Rimington’s prose is merely serviceable, it is always impeccably correct, while Stephens’ is sometimes clumsy, sometimes clichéd, and definitely in need of another edit (not only for matters of style). And yet, maybe precisely because of all that, Targets of Deception makes a good companion to Dead Line. The two books read together are more interesting than either one read alone.
Stephens’ book begins with an epigraph describing a deadly nerve gas. The description is horrifying in part because it is so mundane. How can we assimilate such a reality? It lingers in the mind throughout the hours spent following the briskly conducted narrative. What a fallen world we inhabit! On that, at least, Liz Carlyle and Jordan Sandor could agree.
John Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture.
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