Adrian Magson

Former MI6 agent Clare Jardine is having a rough week. First, she was shot in the stomach. Then, while recuperating in King's College Hospital in London, two Russian hitmen sneak in one night & finish off one of their countrymen who's in the room across the hall. He was a friend of Litvinenko (the high ranking Russian killed by polonium poisoning) & former FSB, now exiled form Russia.
After the killers leave, Clare knows she's in trouble. She's not only a witness, she speaks Russian. With her show more broken body & large gaps in her memory, she leaves & proceeds to hide in central London.
Since her last assignment, Clare doesn't have many friends. She had been banished to an outpost with other agents who had fallen out of favour & during a shootout was injured saving the life of Harry Tate, former MI5.
Harry & Rik Ferris were encouraged to "retire" from the agency & now run a security consulting business. When they are contacted by Clare's old boss, Richard Ballatyne, to find her, Harry feels he owes her one. But neither he nor Rik could have predicted the fallout from this. Soon, they are running with Clare, not just from the determined Russians, but from an old nemesis & a new threat inside MI6. Ballatyne helps as much as he can behind the scenes but can't show his hand 'til he finds the leak from within.
This is a fast paced thriller full of intrigue, double crosses & secrets. Harry & Rik are a likeable team of opposites. Harry is old school, smart & suspicious of everyone. Rik is a young hacker with mad computer skills & a unique fashion sense. Clare is an interesting character. She's a survivor with as much to fear from her former colleagues as the FSB. She's prickly, distrustful & even if you don't particularly like her, you have to respect her abilities & intelligence. Clare has always been in the closet but the only one that may help them is an old lover who happens to be a Russian agent.
There are lots of twists & turns and several of the characters you really want to see get what they deserve. These people have turned back stabbing into an art form & everyone has a hidden agenda. The dialogue is sharp & real as the author slowly reveals layer after layer of lies & secret alliances and you can't help cheering on the trio as they take on all comers & the body count rises.
All in all, a well written thriller that should appeal to fans of Lee Child & Nelson DeMille as well as fans of previous Harry Tate novels. show less

Another brilliantly plotted Rocco novel, cleverly bringing in the many documented attempts to assassinate President de Gaulle with the activities of the Kray twins and other gangs across the Channel in the early 1960s. The author readily evokes a sense of 60s rural France together with what was happening on a broader front politically as France extricated itself from North Africa and remembered WW2 and their ill-fated exploits in Indo-China. Highly recommended.

I dunno. Somehow it seems to me that putting a story in a real place, even if it is a place most people don't know, obliges the author to at least try to make the setting at least somewhat realistic. Putting the story in the past does not get the author off the hook. I happened to have spent several months in Georgia this year and in several of the Former Soviet States at the time when the story is set, and it Red Station does not even come close. Clearly Mr. Magson spent no time in the USSR show more or the FSS and if he has visited Georgia, it might have been the one north of Florida.

The plot line is telegraphed early on and doesn't seem to me to be realistic.

So the question to you, dear reader, is whether you can push aside the above in order to read a fast-paced thriller. I could not.

I received a review copy of " Red Station" by Adrian Magson from publishers Black Thorn through NetGalley.com. show less

This was quite an entertaining novel. The short chapter made for a quick read and Harry Tate was a likeable character. I admired his tenacity as he uncovered the corruption in MI5 and MI6 and there was certainly lots of action.

"Red Station: was a solid mystery without being far-fetched and there were enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. An enjoyable start to this spy series.