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Jon Stock (1) (1966–)

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6 verk 215 medlemmar 8 recensioner

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Foto taget av: Courtesy of Serpent's Tail Press

Serier

Verk av Jon Stock

Dead Spy Running (2010) 122 exemplar
Games Traitors Play (2011) 53 exemplar
Dirty Little Secret (2012) 21 exemplar
The Cardamom Club (2003) 9 exemplar

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This is a compelling spy novel with a complex love story. One of the characters is a Baha'i, and the persecution of the Baha'is in Iran plays into the plot.
 
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ajrenshaw99 | 3 andra recensioner | Sep 1, 2023 |
Phew! This is a good one.

I would suggest (again) that John le Carré defined the British spy novel - and even the names and terms of the (real) world of espionage in many people's understanding of such things. More than James Bond - at least until recently. But, le Carré's classics, whilst still being classics, are a bit old-school, aren't they? He's good, but all a bit last century? But because the world le Carré created is quite probably the world that many readers think actually exists, it must be difficult to try to move into 'his territory' and write a 21st Century spy novel. Difficult to say things are/were different and sound convincing.

Unless, it seems, you're Jon Stock. His 'Games Traitors Play' is the first of his novels I have read - but it will absolutely not be the last.

'Games Traitors Play' plunges immediately headlong into a thoroughly believable and satisfyingly confusing, switch-back story of cross-, double-cross - and I wouldn't be at all surprised if I didn't miss a triple cross somewhere along the line. Talk about not being able to put it down, I couldn't. Didn't dare. It was glued to my hands. Didn't dare feel like I'd missed something, misinterpreted someone somewhere double crossing someone somewhere else. You can't take your eyes off this one for a moment. I love a book where you really need to pay attention.

So, he seems to have effortlessly and immediately created a believable - background history and all - spy world. Gone of course, is the Cold War. But the tensions and aftershocks are still being felt. International terrorism is the 'new Russia', of course, but the old Russia is still alive and kicking. And part of the fall-out from the Cold War, is new tension based on old rivalries, between the UK and US spy and counter-spy cultures. No matter how satisfying it is, as a British reader, to see the Yank intelligence people get their comeuppance from time to time, you do have to remind yourself sometimes that we're supposed to be on the same side here! And who is on the other side? Who knows! A thoroughly confusing, shifting, shapeless world of terrorists cells, individuals and Jihadists, each using each other and their allegiances to each other and no one, to create an unidentifiable moving target for today's secret agents to try and aim at. In the good old days, you knew that everyone on this side of the Iron Curtain was on your side, everyone on the other side, wasn't, didn't you? Everyone on both sides, knew which rules to play by; they'd all been to the same English Public Schools after all! That's all changed. I don't envy today's spies, that's for sure.

The book rushes round the espionage world at a satisfyingly controlled breakneck pace, taking in amongst other places, Morocco and the Atlas Mountains, Sardinia and deepest, darkest Russia. But it is mainly centred on Britain, British spies now and then and London and MI6's headquarters. No longer of course 'The Circus', but the much more modern 'Legoland' (if you've seen the latest James Bond 'Skyfall', you'll know why). Also and a first in my reading experience, the genteel town of Cheltenham and it's GCHQ 'doughnut' get some well-deserved recognition.

In the end, 'Games Traitors Play' is a book all about relationships. Uneasy, troubled, but necessary relationships. Between MI5 and MI6, between the UK and the US and especially their respective ways of doing things. Between family, father and son, brothers and of course, the past and the present, between old-school and new-school spying.

As i said, I couldn't put it down. Even when I'd finished. Kept hoping there was more. There are more, so Amazon will be getting an order as soon as my pocket money arrives in the new year.

"Little does she know that I know that she knows that I know she's two-timing me...."

Remember that song?

Suppose you need to be of a certain age.
… (mer)
 
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Speesh | 2 andra recensioner | Mar 29, 2014 |
"Things must be serious if the Americans were cosying up to the French."

Forget exploding jet fighters and escaped international terrorists. Forget British spies who may or may not be in league with said international terrorists and a CIA chief trying to take over MI6. Forget all about an MI6 chief being undermined by his colleagues and a body count, as the result of terrorist action across Britain, mounting by the minute...that's nowt! If the Yanks are best buddies with the Frogs, the world really HAS tilted off its axis.

'Dirty Little Secret', is the third of Jon Stock's Daniel Marchant thrillers (hopefully not the last) and begins with the various intelligence agencies trying to pick up the pieces after the mayhem of the end of 'Games Traitors Play.' 'The fire and confusion, the smoke and the sound', as the great Todd Rundgren once so eloquently put it. The international terrorist Salim Dhar has escaped the wreckage and gone missing. Our soon to be ex-very good friends, the CIA, are of the opinion that the British MI6 spy Marchant not only knows where he is, but is also actively helping him. It was all an unholy mess and it's still a mess at the start of this book.

So, everything just how you'd want it from a modern spy thriller. A crazy situation that starts badly, spirals seemingly out of control, then gets much worse. Friends become enemies and those who were enemies in the past, become the only ones you can trust to be predictable in the present.

In fact, I think 'Dirty Little Secret' is a lot about and hinges on, how past events shape the present ones. Recent events, in terms of what has gone on in the two previous books, but mainly in the past for nearly all the main characters. The past might indeed be a foreign country, and the country for both father and son (and half-son) Marchant, is India. While the story doesn't take us there this time, many times their earlier lives in India casts a shadow over their current lives in the here and now. India is where Marchant junior had his formative years, where his twin brother died tragically young and it's where Marchant Snr was stationed when he, erm...'sowed the seeds', of at least some of the present situation's problems. Then, for another of the main, perhaps more old-fashioned, characters, the spy world of the past would have been shaken to its core to find there was suspicion of (yet another) a Russian mole sitting pretty, high up in MI6. It says something about the mess Jon Stock has got us all into, that it feels almost reassuring! No great surprise then, to find a spy chief rushing off eastwards, presumably to Russia. The Yanks, bless 'em, find it shockingly predictable Brit behaviour. They did it in the past, look, they're at it again now! British spy chief goes AWOL - ring Moscow. But we know it's not him Moscow have their claws into. In the past maybe, not the present.

Crikey, I can go on a bit, eh? I didn't want to go writing out the story again, Jon Stock does that job a whole lot better than me, as I certainly hope you'll discover for yourselves.

I did though feel that the start of the book could have done with a bit more of a bang and been a bit 'neater'. There is a lot of 'tidying up' to do, but I felt it could have been a little sharper in doing it. But it does then kick on shortly after we've got everyone scurrying off from under the rock for the rest of the tale. Mainly, I thought it began to work as it should, as well as the first two I mean, when I started to think 'ooh, they're not gonna like THAT one little bit.'

With unexpected twists and turns, shocks and surprises, 'Dirty Little Secret' is a fittingly high-tension, and thoroughly satisfying final stage (?) in the Daniel Marchant story. When you add to the mix some really rather, shall we say 'uncomfortable' treatment dished out to reasonably innocent IT workers (it certainly isn't easy to look away and keep reading at the same time, I can tell you), and a level of surveillance ability, which, if true in the real world, makes you glad you've never typed b.o.m.b. in an email (and I have a tin-foil hat on as I write this). What could be better? Oh yeah, the wife getting annoyed at leaping 6ft in the air off the sofa in shock countless times when I slam the (hardback) book down on the coffee-table with a 'Ho-ley SHITE!' (or it's Danish equivalent, 'Kors i røven!!!'). Yeah, there's all that too.

There's more than one person here, with a 'Dirty Little Secret', your mission, and you better choose to accept it, is to find out who can keep it covered up longest.

Go buy the whole series*. Go do it. Now!

*Check on Amazon, for which is 1, 2 and 3. And buy 'em as physical editions, you 'll feel much better about it.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Speesh | Mar 29, 2014 |
Shut the doors, lock the windows, hide the phone put the car away. Once you start, you're not going anywhere until you finish reading this one.

More addictive than the contents of a warehouse just the other side of the Mexican border, more twists and turns than the road up into the mountains from Innsbruck to Seefeld we travelled on this last summer.

You really shouldn't reckon on putting 'Dead Spy Running' down until you're done.

This is the first in the current Marchant trilogy (I say 'current' mainly in the hope of there being more than the three Jon Stock has written so far). Here we're introduced to the character of Daniel Marchant, but in a way that feels right, as if we're joining him and his story, his life, not at the start, but kind of a fair way in. It's clear that a lot has happened before we join Marchant; in his childhood, his younger days, his previous career as a journalist abroad and his early days in 'the Service.' He comes with a lot of baggage. Not least that his father was a previous head of the MI6 he now works for. But, by not being introduced to him at the beginning of his story, it felt almost as if this book was a number two, or three and I did have to check that it was indeed the first of the series. I liked this feeling. It means that facts about why he is who and how he is, are dotted around for us to find. We learn who he is gradually and intriguingly. So the character develops and folds out for us and his decisions and actions make sense as he progresses through the story. Hope that makes sense?

Marchant has been suspended by MI6, then gets caught up in an incident involving the London Marathon, the American Ambassador and a suicide bomber loaded down with explosives. For us it's clear he's the hero, but after an investigation by the CIA, he's deemed quite the opposite. Obviously someone somewhere wants his name blackened. Things get worse from there on. He gets taken off to Poland by the CIA, to help them with their enquiries, if you know what I mean. Later he travels over to India, where his father was stationed, where he grew up and where he still seems to have family...All the time he is constantly followed, constantly on his guard and constantly under suspicion for being something he may or may not be. You have to keep your wits about you nearly as much as he does once you get involved with this story, that's for sure.

While reading 'Dead Spy Running' I was really pleased to come to think of none less than the great Len Deighton at his best. Sharp dialogue, concise, water-tight plotted story, plenty of action and a spy with cool and attitude. Indeed, for a totally modern, thoroughly up-to-date, 21st Century spy thriller, it was interesting that I found one of the best moments was involving a character who could have just stepped out of a Len Deighton-type Cold War spy novel, 'Hugo Prentice', playing by, to quote; 'Moscow rules, British style'. And playing the, what could be described as, somewhat over enthusiastic CIA chief Spiro at his own game. Laughed out loud, with a 'take THAT!, at that incident. The old dogs can still show the young pups some new tricks.

But there's also something to think about. Some work for the brain, as well as the eyes. Sometimes, you just have to stop, stare into space and let the ramifications of what may or may not have happened sink in. "So... if he's doing that, to him, then that must mean that she's also...but then if they do that, then that would mean..." Nothing for it but to read on, asap.

Personally speaking, it would have been better if I'd read this first one first, not the second ('Games Traitors Play') first. Some of the secrets revealed here, would have had their full intended shock, rather than just giving me the complete picture of incidents I was already familiar with because I'd read number two first. Read on their own, one and two are perfectly self contained. You could absolutely get the maximum out of them as individual books. But if you're going to read the whole trilogy, you owe it to yourself to give yourself the total available pleasure by reading them in the published order.

If you're looking for a British spy of the old-school for the new age, a spy not afraid to go out on a limb and a story that races along, barely pausing for breath, with characters you like, care about and celebrate with when they stick it to the 'enemy' (even if that's the Yanks!); then you'll find this a really excellent, convincing and absorbing novel. A novel to keep you on your toes and glued to the chair.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Speesh | 3 andra recensioner | Mar 29, 2014 |

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Statistik

Verk
6
Medlemmar
215
Popularitet
#103,625
Betyg
½ 3.5
Recensioner
8
ISBN
57
Språk
3

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