Present Danger

By: Stella Rimington

Narrated by: Maggie Mash

Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's Summary

MI5 officer Liz Carlyle is posted to Northern Ireland. From the moment she lands in Belfast, danger follows. She soon discovers that the peace process in the province is precarious.

Then a source reports strange goings-on at a house on the Irish Sea owned by the Fraternity, an organisation Liz suspects of being a front for renegade former IRA men. Its head is Seamus Piggott, an Irish-American with a gun-running past.

When another informant reports a plot is being hatched against the security forces, Liz and her colleague Dave Armstrong suspect Piggott is involved, along with a former French Intelligence officer.

Moving from London to Belfast to the South of France, the latest Stella Rimington Liz Carlyle novel is a propulsive thriller filled with action and nail-biting suspense.

©2009 Stella Rimington (P)2010 WF Howes Ltd

Disappointing read from retired head of MI5

Viewing a TV interview with author Stella Rimmington, I was impressed by her personal authority, and the fact that she had mixed parenthood (single parenthood at that) and top leadership in British espionage. So, I reasoned, her fictionalised accounts of life in MI5 had to be laced with authentic details and situations.

But this was not to be the case. It was a hard-work listen, but I persisted believing that, given the author's history, there had to be something engaging ahead. But why was it hard work: maybe it was the reader, I thought -- earnest, sententious and heavy going interpretations of some voices and other voices trivialised. Maybe it was the heroine, Liz Carlyle: impeccably moral, looking for love, brave, conscious of establishing herself as a woman in a previously male world. I thought that it was all fair enough that she shakes, she flutters, needs a hand from her strong males from time to time, is emotional. But Rimmington wasn't establishing her as successfully mixing these traits with professional leadership. In fact, quite the reverse: the actions of this poor woman are used as a pivot for the plot -- Rimmington has her switching off her mobile phone for a day, and deleting unheard phone messages, while she is away from her post. What does that say about what I assume to be the author's goal of demonstrating that women can be effective leaders. Yes, the plot lines continue to be laboured: in addition to the phone aberrations, we also have a trained and experienced operator make reckless decisions as a result of disappointment in love.

But on we go. By now the listener can almost predict what the characters are going to say and how the plot is going to resolve. The baddies are very bad, the goodies are very....well, very dull. The underlying message is very real ('the Irish troubles' are not fully over -- Britain, you are still in danger). And we must suppose that some of the operational details are authentic.

We now move to islands, and cellars, and rescues -- and there's the reader, still sounding as if she is reading a children's story book -- dialogue becomes more clich??d, the plot more inevitable and transparent.

And now it is all over. And Rimmington has disappointed. Was it lack of confidence as a writer? Were there qualities missed entirely due to the way it was read? Did some sort of official secrets act stop her from creating a strong, authentic saga?

A bit let down

I listened to the last Book Dead line which I really enjoyed, It had good character development, a good sense of suspense and a feeling that the author really knows what she?s talking about and I think she did. She's on shakier ground with this book however, its not as well researched and the characters did things which just didn't make sense or were just so blindingly obvious, I felt a little insulted as a listener. I don't think I'll be buying any more Stella Rimington?s books.

Awful narration

Not a bad story per se and whilst the narrator was OK during the general free flow of the story her efforts at characterisation were so poor as to ruin the book for me. Very poor efforts at dialect, accent, intonation and tempo. I didn’t enjoy the book and that was entirely down to the narration.

Good story ruined by the narrator

What would have made Present Danger better?

Having previously read and enjoyed Stella Rimmington's novels I wished to obtain them by talking boots. The narrator has ruined the experience. There are far better women narrators

What did you like best about this story?

Good paced tale with twists and turns that you would expect

How could the performance have been better?

A different narrator

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

As stated its a quality novel only spoiled by the narrator

Any additional comments?

No

Great story

Really enjoyed the story line but the narration was wooden and robotic at times which was disappointing

Worth reading

I found Maggie Mash voices irritating. The male voices were dreadful. The Irish accents dreadful. Her choice of voices for the British agents were poor …. One of the agents just spoke very slowly!
Difficult to listen to although the story was interesting.

Unintentionally quite funny

No plot to speak of, completely undeveloped stereotype characters, author either ran out of time or lost interest. But worth it for the dialogue and narration - a few genuinely laugh-out-loud moments.

Terrible narrator

The storyline is as always engrossing, but Maggie Mash is just awful She is poor at any accent other than her own - and there are lots of Irish, French and American accents to master !

Not bad but not good enough to love it

I’ve read (and listened to) a lot in this genre and unfortunately Present Danger is just a bit shallow. I didn’t care enough about the characters to really care who lived or died...primarily because I didn’t feel the writer developed them enough. Therefore there wasn’t a huge level of excitement and build-up which you’d expect in this kind of thriller. I’d expected a lot, given the author’s background, but it just didn’t do it for me.

unlistenable

The book is ruined by the performance. If you can't get someone who can do a northern ireland accent, we are missing something. Her mashing of it is totally distracting. As is her attempting to convey men's voices by lowering hers into a growl and slowing down her speech. Which drama school did she go to? couldn't get past the first chapter or two.

Too much shouting!!!

Accents were pretty poor french & Irish and the amount of shouting in the book gave me a headache! Story was good needs a better narrator