Featured Author: Stella Rimington

Stella Rimington's Liz Carlyle series is a notable entry in the spy thriller subgenre.  Firstly, her heroine is a female MI5 intelligence officer - not too many female spies getting their own series! Secondly, the author is unequivocally qualified to write these novels as the former Director-General of M15. Rimington worked her way up to this this position, beginning her tenure with the security service in 1967 and working in all three branches, counter espionage, counter subversion, and counter terrorism, before being promoted to Deputy Director-General in 1990 and then to Director-General shortly thereafter.  She was the first female to become Director-General and the first Director-General to be publicly identified, with her picture published in a 1993 booklet called The Security Service. This booklet was part of a campaign Rimington herself "oversaw...to improve the openness of the Service and increase public transparency" [Wikipedia].

Liz Carlyle is a young, hip 34-year-old intelligence officer navigating life as an agent-runner in the counter-espionage division and in a male-dominated agency. Liz's missions delve into murky plots involving Afghani terrorists, the IRA, attempted assassinations of  Russian diplomats, Middle East peace talks, Somali pirates and beyond, all told in the thorough, densely plotted manner of John le Carré. Read Liz Carlyle's team file on Stella Rimington's website!

Read titles from this series (in order of publication) in the library catalog:

At Risk

Secret Asset

Illegal Action

Dead Line

Rip Tide

The Geneva Trap

Close Call

Also consider watching the British TV show MI-5, several seasons of which are in the library catalog.

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