BOOK Review

Dead Line By Stella Rimington 374 pp, 2009 Quercus paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading book stores, 350 baht

Intelligence is about secrets - keeping your own and ferreting out the other fellow's. Secrets in the catch-all term, national security. Government officials are enjoined not to talk shop outside their work stations. The media is keen on learning and publishing secrets (the public has the right to know). Within limits is the rejoinder of the higher powers.

Those in the pay or sympathetic to foreign powers also try to uncover secrets, to pass them on. Can this be prevented? The UK has the Official Secrets Act - once signed, prison awaits those breaking it. In the US, the cases are based on the intent and the perceived damage done. Executions are the norm for such transgressions in totalitarian states.

In Britain, the head of MI5 is a state secret. By contrast in the States the name of the FBI head, the equivalent, is known from the day of his appointment. It was Stella Rimington, who was head of MI5, that revealed it. Which led to a scandal, amounting to a storm in a teacup. Later it went secret again, until gratuitously given by another MI5 head.

Meanwhile, the redoubtable Ms Rimington turned author. Kicking off with her autobiography she went on to pen cloak and dagger thrillers. Her literary creation is 35-year-old Liz Carlyle, 10 years an MI5 agent. She has a crush on her superior. But as Charles Wetherby, father of two, has a wife with cancer, she's too decent to come on to him in Dead Line.

Peace talks have been scheduled between Israel and Syria, the American president in attendance. The venue will be the Gleneagles resort in Scotland. Security will be multi-national: Israeli, Syrian, American, and the UK's contingent, both police and military. Intelligence reports are received that an attempt will be made to halt the peace talks by assassinating the bigwigs.

Identifying the culprit is the first order of business, thwarting him the second. Problems are that he uses different aliases and the services which should be providing information are keeping mum. Then again he's a charmer and gets women to do his bidding. Not until late in the story are we told that Danny Kollek is an Israeli-born Syrian Jew, became a drogue Mossad agent.

There are numerous works of fiction about assassination attempts (usually against the US president) and here is more of the same. The Secret Service follows the set script for it, ditto Mossad. The Syrians leave little impression. The author shines describing M15, which she knows better than most. She throws in dogs who do everything ordered to.

To fans of John le Carre, Len Deighton and Alistair MacLean, Rimington doesn't rate as a major writer of spy fiction. She has no style to speak of. Her intimate knowledge of MI5 isn't enough. Plots to kill the President are old hat. Danny Kellek's motive isn't strong enough. But Liz Carlyle is pleasant and brainy and I'd like to read more of her. Indeed, Dead Line holds your interest.