Rimington, Stella. Illegal Action, Arrow Books, London 2008. (Pages 394, Paperback)
Rating: 5/10
This book certainly couldn’t be a Booker Prize nominee, but Booker prize is what made me read it.
I like a book to have a good story. It should be easy to read and a page turner if possible. Over the years, the Booker nominees and winners have increasingly frustrated me. True, I could admire the beautiful prose in The God of Small Things (1997) or The Line of Beauty (2004); but Arundhati Roy’s was poetry written in prose, and Hollinghurst was clearly awarded the prize for his gay agenda, rather than literary merit. I would take neither book on a flight, nor would think of returning to them in my old age. The Inheritance of Loss and Wolf hall kept falling from my hands as sleep won over letters. Midnight’s children, which I have never managed to go a few pages beyond, was awarded the Booker of Bookers. I had decided not to touch the Booker books ever again.
And then, the unexpected happened. Stella Rimington, the former chief of MI5, the British spy organization, was appointed the Booker committee chairperson this year. She said she would like to select books that are read rather than admired. That quote drew me back to the Booker list. It was like people living under dictatorship suddenly being told that democracy had returned. This year’s short list contained short books (literally); each could be read in one sitting. You could take them on flights. And I would certainly like to read The Sense of an Ending again and again. It’s wonderfully written.
As a token of my gratitude, I decided to read Stella Rimington, the spy chief, who caused the Booker revolution. (I suggest she chairs the committee for the next five years). The real life Judy Dench had started her spy career in India, unwittingly. She was in Delhi as a first secretary’s wife. She was asked if she would mind working as an assistant to another secretary. (Embassies like to use the services of wives of the staff). After a few months, she found out that the man she was assisting worked for MI5. Stella needed to get a security clearance, later applied for a job with MI5, and eventually became the first Dame Chief in 1992. She propagated openness, and posed for the MI5 brochure, something no other Director General had done before.
Illegal Action, understandably, has authentic descriptions. It’s about Russian spies on the streets of London, who are prepared to kill. Liz Carlyle, the lady James Bond (but much understated), is at the centre of the plot and lands in the house of a Russian oligarch. The novel is fast-paced, cinematic, and fairly realistic (considering how surreal the oligarchs’ world is in reality).
In 2010, as you probably know, ten Russian ‘sleeping agents’ were arrested in the USA, and swapped for four spies imprisoned in Russia. This book, written years before that scandal, explains well what illegals do.
Verdict: Reading this book was my thanksgiving. If you want to thank Stella Rimington for freeing Booker from hypocrisy, you may want to read Illegal Action. A must read if you are an aspiring spy.
Ravi
