Secret Service, Tom Bradby

One of the things Len Deighton did best in his nine volumes featuring British intelligence agent Bernard Samson was to show both the everyday life of the spy as well as the humdrum bureaucracy of a national intelligence service. Tom Bradby captures both aspects as he sets out to relate the tale of Kate Henderson, one of MI-6's upper management employees as well as a wife and the mother of two teenagers. In 2019's Secret Service, we learn that the spy work is not necessarily the most challenging of the roles Kate must fill.

Acting on a tip from an old friend, Kate has run an undercover operation which points the finger of suspicion at several high-ranking government officials as potential secret Russian assets. But a glitch in the op puts Kate on thin ice and unable to confirm which, if any of the officials is really sending secrets to Russia and influencing government policy to favor Russian interests. The sudden resignation of the Prime Minister due to illness sharpens the question considerably: Is England about to put a literal spy into Number 10 Downing Street? Even though she is not in her superior's good graces, Kate and her team must try to unmask which candidate is truly the traitor. And she has to do it while her marriage is shaking, her children resent the time her job takes from them and figuring out how to continue to care for her increasingly failing mother, guilty of a long-ago affair that haunts Kate to this day.

The plot described sounds like it would fit in a slightly racier version of a Lifetime movie but Bradby manages to keep all of these balls in the air as well as weave them in an intricate and intriguing pattern. Kate is good at her job but co-workers and supervisors sometimes worry more about their own bureaucratic turf and career advancement than the safety and security of their nation.

Kate Henderson's debt to Bernard Samson is clear, down to the middle-aged supervisors more interested in projecting their dressed-down images as part of their attempts to recapture lost youth. Deighton made clear that Bernard was not entirely reliable as a narrator and Kate seems a little more dependable, but they both find their ability and clear understanding of what's going on thwarted by less-intelligent overseers. Bradby skillfully sketches his few actual "action" scenes and just as skillfully describes the day-to-day routines Kate follows, both domestic and professional. We learn of Kate's struggle through her interior monologue and responses to what's going on around her -- in other words we are shown, not told what is going on, and Secret Service is much the better for it.

The second book of the trilogy, Double Agent, appeared in 2020 and the conclusion is scheduled for later this year. So far, Bradby's millennial "spy mom" is holding her own with Deighton's baby boomer "spy dad," and we can hope it continues.