Double Agent: From the bestselling author of Secret Service

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It’s an opportunity to meet her husband Stuart who betrayed both his wife and his country, and is now living in Moscow. It follows on directly from Secret Service and I would strongly recommend that you read Secret Service first. As I want to tread carefully with respect to spoilers for ‘Secret Service’, I will be vague about the plot for ‘Double Agent’. Kate Henderson is back and she has to deal with a possible defection of a prominent Russian and his family. We are arguably now entering a new Cold War, with tensions between East and West at its ever increasing height.

I occasionally lost the plot (in more ways that one) but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to Book 3. Henderson, head of MI6's Russian desk, has reason to believe James Ryan, the British Prime Minister, is a Russian sleeper agent, but she has been unable to prove it.The deal on the table: arrange for the safe passage of the defector and his family in exchange for proof that the British Prime Minister is an agent for the Russians.

Its the type of book that is full of action and it takes you on a breathtaking ride from England to Venice and Russia.From that point onward, Kate oscillates between mental and familial crises at home and her need to convince her government to accept Borodin's deal at work. MI5 officer Kate Henderson and her team had to investigate in a storm of politics and hidden agendas along with the possibility that one of her own team was also a spy. There were some parts that seemed a bit off to me but that's probably because I haven't read the first book in the series.

I found the two aspects distracted from each other rather than enhanced the book and I struggled a bit as a result. In many ways this was like a ‘tying up loose ends’ from the previous book and was good to be back with Senior MI6’s Kate and the gang as they once again tried to unravel fact from fiction as to whether the PM was indeed a Russian spy! For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin. A follow on from last year's "Secret Service", Kate Atkinson is temporarily kidnapped in Venice by a Russian who wants to defect, and promising compromising video of the British PM, as well as evidence that the PM is on Russia's payroll. I love these because Tom Bradby beautifully balances the edge-of-your-seat thriller elements with the spycraft and political infighting.In the sequel, Kate Henderson not only must deal with the aftermath of the fact that her husband was a mole working for Russian intelligence, but also with the effect it has on her relationship with her children. Kate is at the centre of things throughout, and comes across as some variety of super-mum, juggling a family and career with added combat skills, facility with languages, and generally being the saviour of Western civilisation.