Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Illegal Action
    Unavailable
    Illegal Action
    Unavailable
    Illegal Action
    Audiobook9 hours

    Illegal Action

    Written by Stella Rimington

    Narrated by Rosalyn Landor

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Liz has been transferred to counter-espionage-the hub of MI5 operations during the Cold War, which has been scaled back as anti-terrorism has gained priority. But there's plenty for her to do: there are more spies operating in London in the 21st century than there were during the height of East-West hostilities. Even the Russians still have a large contingent, although now they spy on the international financial community and on the wealthy ex-pat oligarchs who make England their domain.

    In her new assignment, Liz quickly uncovers a plot to silence one of these Russians: Nikita Brunovsky, an increasingly vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin. The Foreign Office is adamant about forestalling a crime that could become a full-blown international incident, but there's not a single clue as to how the assassination will be carried out-and Liz is solely responsible for averting disaster. So she goes undercover, attaching herself to Brunovsky's retinue: racing against the clock to determine who betrayed him and suddenly facing a wholly unexpected second task-unmasking a Russian operative working undercover alongside her.

    Dame Stella has once again distilled her experience as the first woman Director General of MI5 into a spy novel of arresting psychological complexity and unflagging suspense.



    From the Compact Disc edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 1, 2008
    ISBN9781415955222
    Unavailable
    Illegal Action
    Author

    Stella Rimington

    Dame Stella Rimington joined the Security Service (MI5) in 1968. During her career she worked in all the main fields of the Service: counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. She was appointed Director General in 1992, the first woman to hold the post. She has written her autobiography and six Liz Carlyle novels. She lives in London and Norfolk.

    Related to Illegal Action

    Related audiobooks

    Crime Thriller For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Master Of Mayhem

      Oct 16, 2022

      Master Of Mayhem
      8 min read

    • Article

      Putin Finally Went Too Far

      Mar 27, 2018

      Putin Finally Went Too Far
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Neglected Hero Of The French Resistance

      Mar 28, 2019

      As a young mother, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade took over the leadership of the alliance network. Her name faded from the record, but a new biography offers a carefully researched and compulsively readable account of her escapades.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Jonah Goldberg: Putin’s War On Ukraine Is In The Sinister Tradition Of The Russian War Machine

      Apr 11, 2023

      Vladimir Putin and his war machine get more respect than they deserve from the West. This may seem a bit counterintuitive. After all, just 9% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Russia and the International Criminal Court has recently issued an

      3 min read

    • Article

      Moscow’s Metropol Hotel Served As A ‘Gilded Cage’ For Western Journalists

      Nov 20, 2023

      When the German army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the USSR and Britain became instant, if unlikely, allies. Relations between the two nations had been frosty: After World War I, Britain sent combat troops to Russia to fight the Soviets duri

      3 min read

    • Article

      Central Intelligence

      Aug 4, 2022

      A Question of Standing: The History of the CIA by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones OUR 320 pages, £20 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a leading authority on US intelligence, has crafted an excellent history of the CIA – erudite but fluent and accessible. It engages with

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Long Game

      May 29, 2022

      The Long Game
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Duke Of Duplicity

      Sep 30, 2021

      Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor by Andrew Lownie Blink, 352 pages, £25 The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, can be hard to see clearly. Looming over their controversial figures are clo

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hitting A Home Run

      Oct 1, 2020

      Hitting A Home Run
      2 min read

    • Article

      World At War

      Mar 8, 2024

      By JOSEPH O’CONNOR Vintage In 1943 the Nazis invaded Rome, with the city ruled by the vicious Gestapo commander Paul Hauptmann. The Vatican, an independent country within the city, was neutral territory and off limits to Hitler’s thugs. As the Occup

      3 min read

    • Article

      On The Record

      Jul 16, 2023

      On The Record
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Spies Who Love Putin

      Jan 17, 2017

      The Spies Who Love Putin
      6 min read

    • Article

      Vladimir And I

      Apr 11, 2022

      Summer, such as it was, has now gone and we are tumbling into winter, in more ways than one. As I write this, the world is watching the war in Ukraine with all its chilling implications to peace in Europe. Nearly 80 years after the end of the last wo

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Political Role Model

      Oct 9, 2023

      Work-life balance is important, and it’s crucial to seek light relief. When my children were young, I liked nothing better than to turn them out to play while I curled up with a giant book about the Nazis. These days, as I follow every twist and turn

      2 min read

    • Article

      Leonard Pitts Jr.: What Begins In Lies Tends To End In Carnage

      Feb 27, 2022

      Then as now, it began with lies. On Sept. 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler’s forces crossed the border into Poland. The German chancellor did so on the pretext that ethnic Germans were being persecuted. German operatives, disguised as Poles, even staged an atta

      2 min read

    Reviews for Illegal Action

    3.5/5

    73 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This is the third in the author's series of intelligence-themed thrillers featuring MI5 officer Liz Carlyle. Unlike the previous two dealing mostly with Islamic terrorism, this concerns an apparent plot to murder a Russian oligarch in London. The plot is not what it seems, but all the same struck me as rather less dramatic than its predecessors and somewhat inconsequential, so I enjoyed this one rather less
    • 4/5
      This novel sees Liz Carlyle, the capable, conscient MI5 officer, return for a third outing, this time engaging with the bizarre community of immensely (even immeasurably) Russian oligarchs who have relocated to London.Through informal channels, it has come to the attention of MI5 that their Russian counterparts might be planning to assign an ‘Illegal’ to an operation in the United Kingdom. An ‘illegal’ is an agent who lives in the host country entirely without any official diplomatic cover, and is consequently vulnerable to the full impact of local law, without recourse to Embassy-sponsored immunity. At the same time, different informal intelligence channels have suggested that one of the many Russian oligarchs might have been earmarked for assassination. By way of broader contest, this novel was published in 2007, shortly after the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security agent who had defected. Litvinenko had accused his senior officers of having commissioned the assassination of the business tycoon Boris Berezovsky. Having been arrested on charges of having exceeded his authority, Litvinenko was acquitted and subsequently fled to London where he claimed asylum. He subsequently died as a consequence of polonium poisoning, with prevailing public opinion laying the ultimate blame on the Russian authorities.Against this backdrop, Liz Carlyle infiltrates the household of the oligarch who is thought to be at risk, masquerading as a postgraduate student of art history hired to advise him on prospective additions to his already impressive stock of artefacts. The household is certainly unorthodox, even beyond the context of the limitless money fuelling its members’ self-indulgent lifestyles. It also seems to harbour several threats to the wellbeing of the oligarch, but also, as time moves on, to Liz herself.As in Stella Rimington’s previous novels, the interplay between MI5 and its fellow (rival?) security agencies, is explored in an interesting manner, and once again she delivers a gripping and plausible plot.
    • 3/5
      It feels authentic. Pieces come together bit by bit and what seems obvious doesn't pan out.
    • 4/5
      This was a tight espionage story, with enough twists & turns to keep you guessing what might be going on, and plenty of action in the last quarter of the book. It builds slowly to the climax, but there's certainly enough going on to keep your interest.Liz Carlyle is an agent in MI5 and she's been assigned to counter-espionage, under the control of Brian who is still living sometime in the cold war. She gets placed in the house of a Russian Oligarch and ends up getting mixed up in the slightly convoluted plans of a Russian secret agent. What these are, I will not divulge, but there are plenty of twists and turns to get there.Liz was really very believable. She is clearly in love with her old boss and has a certain attitude of proving that she's not just a feeble female in a male environment - at times in conflict to all her instincts. She wasn't superhuman and had just enough fallibility to ring true. I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator was very good, doing a complete set of accents with style. A very good listen.
    • 3/5
      The third in the series and my least favourite so far. Liz has moved to counter-intelligence (mainly Russia) and has a new boss. She reluctantly agrees to pretend to be an art student so she can hang around at the house of a Russian oligarch who is an art lover and who might be at risk of assassination (or he might not). There was also a strand involving the oligarch's chauffeur-bodyguard being forced to report to the Russians on his boss' contacts.The plot was extremely unlikely and I never quite understood what Liz was trying to achieve. SPOILERS: Also, how did Greta know about Liz at all to wangle her meeting with Dmitri in Cambridge? Why did they work so hard to have Morozov and Brunovsky in Ireland at the same time if Liz was to be Brunovsky's alibi? Wouldn't it have been an even more convincing alibi if Liz and Brunovsky had stayed in London and Morozov had gone to look at the painting?
    • 5/5
      Liz Carlisle is back in action as an agent with British intelligence. This is a "traditional thriller/heroine mix of dysfunctional personal life and steely ambition."
    • 4/5
      Another story in the Liz Carlyle series. This time she goes undercover at a Russian Oligarch's house in London to try to identify if he is under threat and by whom. As you might expect good on security services procedural detail, including inter-service rivalries, which kept me reading up to the end, although not wholly satisfactory plotting.
    • 4/5
      This maintains the high standards set by the first two books in the series featuring fictional spook Liz Carlyle. It is a good page turner with some dramatic, if predictable, closing chapters.