📖 Blog Tour ~ The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter

 

 

Quercus
7 November 2024

Thanks to the publisher for the copy of the book
and the invitation to the blog tour

Slim Parsons is all but burned.

Her last deep cover job for MI5 ended with a life-and-death struggle on a private jet that caused her to go on the run from both the deadly target and her angry bosses in the Security Service. They say that violence comes too easily to her; that she's bordering on delinquent and unsuitable for the roll of an MI5 operative.

Yet she is recalled and asked to infiltrate a news website that's causing alarm in the highest circles. It is staffed by a group descended from wartime codebreakers operating from an unassuming office block near Bletchley Park. Operation Linesman looks like a come down, the curtain on a brilliant career in the shadows. However, she accepts the assignment on condition that the Security Service searches for her missing brother.

Linesman turns out to be anything but simple. Her personal loss, her previous deep cover role, and a threat to MI5 itself from her original target come together in a three-way collision.

And all the while she is watched by someone even deeper in the shadows than she is.

📖 My Review..

We first meet Slim Parsons when she is on leave from her role as a security service operator working with MI5. However, her last undercover job left her with a whole heap of personal issues along with a real sense of danger. When Slim is given an opportunity to infiltrate an online news website she does so on the provision that the Security Services help to locate her brother who has been missing for several years. Slim soon realises that there is far more to this new investigation than she could ever have imagined and with people from her past also out for revenge she must try to keep one step ahead of those who would do her harm.

The story starts off as something of a slow burner as we get to know just what makes Slim Parsons tick. She is definitely an enigma girl with more shadows in her past than any one person should have to deal with and yet she handles her espionage role with great aplomb and is not afraid to challenge to get what’s needed. I enjoyed watching Slim’s character progression, especially her relationship with her mother and of course, her  dog, Loup. As we get deeper into the story so all the pieces of this complex puzzle start to come together making it an enjoyable and cleverly constructed spy thriller which raises some interesting issues and gives a fascinating fictional insight into the workings of the modern day security services whilst also giving a nod to the past. 

With a cleverly controlled and complex mystery at its core and with a remarkable female protagonist taking centre stage The Enigma Girl captured my interest from start to finish.

About the Author

Frequently described as the heir to John le Carré, Henry Porter lives in London. Alongside being the former London editor of Vanity Fair and newspaper columnist for the Observer, Henry Porter has written several acclaimed and bestselling thrillers. His book Brandenburg won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and his other thrillers A Spy's Life and Empire State were both nominated for the same award. Henry is also the author of the award winning Paul Samson spy thrillers: Firefly, which won the 2019 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize; White Hot Silence and The Old Enemy.

X @HenryCPorter #TheEnigmaGirl

X @QuercusBooks

X @soph_ransomepr 

X @poppydelingpole