The Moscow Sleepers

Liz Carlyle #10

by Stella Rimington

For fans of Homeland and The Night Manager, the latest thriller in Stella Rimington's bestselling espionage series sees Liz Carlyle investigating a sinister Russian plot.

A Russian immigrant lies dying in a hospice in upstate Vermont. When a stranger visits, claiming to be a childhood friend, the FBI is alerted and news quickly travels to MI5 in London.

Liz Carlyle and her colleague Peggy Kinsolving are already knee-deep in conspiracies, and as they unravel the events that landed the man in the hospital, Liz learns of a network of Russians and their plot to undermine the German government. Liz and Peggy set out to locate and stop this insidious network, traveling the world from Montreal to Moscow.

The latest expertly plotted thriller in Stella Rimington's bestselling series, The Moscow Sleepers is a white-knuckle ride through the dark underbelly of international intelligence, simmering political animosities, and global espionage.

Genres: Fiction, Espionage, Mystery, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Russia, Crime

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 20, 2018

About the author

Dame Stella Rimington was a British author and Director General of MI5, a position she held from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment. In 1993, Rimington became the first DG of MI5 to pose openly for cameras at the launch of a brochure outlining the organisation's activities.

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool spy novel with throwbacks to Cold-War era tension. This was a highly complex read with lots of details and connecting characters to unpack from sleeper cells in lazy Vermont college towns to Russian contacts, to schools for refugees, to East German era sleepers who were implanted in the west but never really used. Or were they? Who is working for who and how do all of these pieces fit together? Needless to say, this was a book that was really hard to put down.

Author Stella Remington’s background working in this field is apparent in the technical aspects of the writing. I found myself completely engrossed, wondering where this tale of espionage was going next, who was secretly betraying whom, and when they were going to get caught.

[Alex Cantone · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Moscow Sleepers is the first I have read by author (Dame) Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, and it was a refreshing change in pace. Though it is the 10th book in the Liz Carlyle series, I soon caught on who the main players were in this modern day version of the cold war.

In the past the former KGB recruited young people as sleepers, infiltrating most of the west and placing them in bureaucracies or universities to deliver disinformation. Now, the FSB is capitalizing on the human tide of misery fleeing Syria and other parts of the Middle East making hazardous trips in leaking boats, by taking advantage of the Merkel government’s open border policy to intercept the cleverest and school them in IT/hacking. As a side story, an MI6 operative is sent to Moscow to try to ‘turn’ an FSB agent. Slow in places, it picks up on old rivalries and inter-departmental confusion.

There is less bloodshed and more field craft in the story, based on the author’s inside knowledge, and the characters are sympathetically portrayed without the usual ‘glamour’. I will certainly be seeking out other titles.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 3 out of 5]

'The Moscow Sleepers' is the tenth book in the Liz Carlyle espionage series by former MI5 agent Stella Rimington. Being a big fan of spy novels, when I read the synopsis I knew this was one I wanted to read. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my high expectations and was sadly lacking in quite a few different areas.

So, the positives firstly, there was a lot of intricate details to the plot which I appreciated, but unlike some of the better thrillers, there is a classic case of overcomplicating the plot leading to a convoluted and sometimes confusing storyline. There are also a plethora of characters that are barely developed, so because of their lack of depth you find you don't remember their names or how they fit into the book. Rimington is a great writer and knows how to grab the reader, but I always feel that the espionage genre requires books to be exceptionally thrilling, page-turners. However, I felt it was sadly lacking in that department, too. There was not much going on for large chunks of the book, and I feel the author missed a trick with not executing this premise to maximum affect. The use of topical issues, such as our relationship with Russia could've created a tension that slowly ratcheted up the suspense aspects of the plot and led to a veritable thrill ride.

The topical nature of the plot needed more attention paid to making a fast-paced, intense read. Instead, it was pedestrian, cliched and rather clumsy.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first "Liz Carlyle" espionage read, and I most certainly will be reading more by this author. There are no freaky superhuman feats performed, just modern day, everyday kind of jobs that intelligence agencies perform. While it is not thriller speed, it is well paced with plenty of global action to keep up with. In this outing we get to know Liz as she maintains contact with Russian relative (brother) of agent who leaks enough information to reveal years of effort in building a team of refugee cyber stars. We visit Vermont, Suffolk, Germany and Russia following the action.

Since I am a woman, I do not think it offensive to say there just may be a softer side to espionage books and I am happy to have discovered it. This author lived it herself and writes a good yarn. I'm in!

[Sid Nuncius · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t get on well with The Moscow Sleepers. It felt rather formulaic and wasn’t well enough written to convince me of the characters or the plot.

The book is about possible Russian agents (“sleepers”) in the west and MI5 and related agencies’ attempts to uncover them and their activities, with her principal character, Liz Carlyle of MI5 at the centre of things. Stella Rimington obviously knows this world intimately, but portraying it convincingly in a novel is another matter. She has a slightly forced prose style, as though she hasn’t quite moved from official documents to a relaxed, flowing style of her own in fiction. Some stale usages and clichés crop up fairly regularly, like the character who, before going away, “had to get her ducks in a row first” for example, which I found off-putting.

There are an awful lot of characters, almost invariably introduced as they are travelling somewhere or waiting for something and thinking about...followed by a lengthy, sometimes very over-lengthy, potted history. All these rather clunky introductions made each one seem less like a rounded, real person and more like yet another slightly unconvincing character to keep track of. I began to mutter “Oh, for heavens’ sake” to myself when, even well into the novel, yet more new characters were introduced in exactly the same way, complete with physical description and biographical background. It gets very wearing.

Rimington does like to tell us things rather than show us, often at tediously painstaking length; there is none of the subtlety and tension of le Carré or the wit of Mick Herron, for example, nor even the slow, meticulous plot and character development of Gerald Seymour. Take this little extract, for example: “Liz window-shopped apparently aimlessly, though a close observer would have noted how she lingered at the fronts with large curved windows, and a professional observer might have concluded that she was using the windows to keep an eye on what was going on behind her. She seemed to conclude that nothing was amiss, for she turned with no hesitation into Stresemannstrasse.” Quite apart from the infelicity of the use of “conclude” twice so close together, it’s a terribly laboured description of something so easy and basic. It all got too much for me, I’m afraid.

All this made the book rather a slog for me. I found it pretty unconvincing throughout, it didn’t engage me and I can’t really recommend it.

(My thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC via NetGalley.)

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Stella Rimington's The Moscow Sleepers, the 10th installment in the Liz Carlyle espionage thriller series, this novel follows a riveting tale that could take place in our own country. For Liz Carlyle, an agent with MI5, it all started when a mysterious Swiss man visited a Russian man in an American hospice before he died. That started the investigation on who the man was and what he was after, when the FBI had contacted London. With a thorough background search, they followed the leads to a mysterious school called the Bartholomew Manor in Southwold. For Liz and her partner Peggy Kinsolving, they dig a little bit deeper into what made that school so unsavory and what purpose did they have to teach refugee students computer skills. Before it unraveled faster than a ball of yarn, one of their own agents, Bruno MacKay, did his own investigation in Russia and discovered the truth between two Russian brothers while in Germany, Dieter Nimitz thought he had knew his wife Irma. But she had her own secrets of her own to share and she's connected to the English school. When the secretary wound up dead and a brave student escaped the school, things heated up and took a dangerous turn for Mi5 and in Germany, when they managed to tie up loose ends and extract Bruno out safely before his cover would be blown.

[Frances · Rating 3 out of 5]

A consistently good series..

[Michael Martz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've made it through nearly all of Stella Rimington's 'Liz Carlyle' series, and her new addition, 'The Moscow Sleepers', proves once again that a writer can possess wonderful bona fides but the stories are what will make or break books. Rimington certainly has the background to produce great plots, but her productions, sans a couple of the early efforts, have none of the snap or tension that the best of the genre (obviously Le Carre, but also Cumming, McCarry, Ignatius, etc.). That's not to say her books are worthless, they're just not up to the high bar in this category.

In Moscow Sleepers, a few things are going on that end up being connected. A 'sleeper cell' of Russian agents leftover from the cold war era is activated in Germany (half of the husband/wife team, anyway), and old man who is suspected to also be involved is on his deathbed in Vermont, an old school in England that once educated the upper crust seems now to be curiously focused on teaching IT skills to immigrant teenagers, and a Brit intelligence asset who is feeding information to the service gleaned from his ex-KGB brother is suddenly becoming nervous. Liz has her fingers in most of these subplots as do the normal cast of characters in the series.. The ongoing challenges of Liz's love life are also never far away. Anyway, things wrap up a little too nicely in the end.

So, my problems with Moscow Sleepers are several. To begin with, it's not very well-written. There's nothing grammatically incorrect or anything like that, it just doesn't propel you through its pages and the dialogue is as wooden as it can be. Liz's radar is constantly on the search for her next Mr. Right, which is understandable and really doesn't get in the way as much as just becomes irritating after awhile. And my biggest problem is with the conclusion, which I'll state in general terms so as not to spoil it. In as complicated a scenario as is experienced by the participants, high end law enforcement and intelligence types, I'd expect an exhaustive post-project review and deconstruction of events. In this case, one of the participants developed a single theory which, after minimal discussion, pretty much everyone agreed with, and that was that. Although I have no direct experience in this type of work, I seriously doubt that's what would've happened.

The Carlyle series appears to be in a trough, but here's hoping there will be a return to Rimington's early form at some point.

[Jacki (Julia Flyte) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than my three star rating suggests. Until near the end, it juggles multiple characters and a complex plot with aplomb. But the best thing about Stella Rimington's books is the way that she utilises her knowledge and experience as the former Director General of MI5. I find the way that she describes spycraft utterly fascinating - from minor things (an FBI character doesn't bother trying to follow a suspect's car because he knows it's pretty much impossible - not the norm in books of this genre) to the way that an agent is infiltrated and later extricated from a hostile country.

The plot is complicated to explain, but it centres on Russian efforts to use facilities in other countries to train individuals to conduct cyber-attacks. Scraps of intelligence from various sources gradually harden into firm data and the need to investigate a Russian operation on British soil. It develops at a good pace and there are several moments that are genuinely tense.

However towards the end, it fizzles away. The villains make a couple of decisions that don't add up and are never explained. A couple of key characters get killed off, but "off camera", which is unsatisfying given that we've got to know them. The central characters need to have a meeting to discuss it to make sense of it all.

This is the 10th book in the series. It's a standalone story but the characters do refer quite often to events from previous books.

[Jill]

Too slow of a build-up.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stella Rimington's latest espionage thriller Moscow Sleepers kept me engaged throughout.

Dame Stella Rimington, DCB is a British author and former Director General of MI5, a position she held from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment. Wikipedia

I've read one other book by Rimington and was pleased that I enjoyed this one as well. The story begins in Vermont with a dying university professor in a hospice. When a visitor finally arrives, the nurse notifies the FBI, as she has been instructed to do.

From Vermont, to London, to Brussels and Berlin, to a school in rural England--the plot involves the unraveling of the importance of the dying Vermont academic to a conspiracy involving immigrant children and computer hacking. Liz Carlyle is back on the job with MI5.

As a result of Stella Rimington's nearly 30 years of experience with MI5, her plots have a realistic feel. Rimington's work is more concerned with putting together puzzle pieces than the more violent works of other espionage writers. I enjoyed the puzzle and the characters.

Read in August. Blog review scheduled for Nov. 1.

NetGalley/Bloomsbury USA
Espionage/Mystery. Nov. 13, 2018.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, right back on form.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[frazer livingstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good read. Doesn't have the usual guns and action that usually features in these sort of stories. This makes it feel more realistic and believable as a result. Would recommend this book.

[Giles Burrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. It's a story with many threads that comes to a satisfactory conclusion. It features all the usual suspects that we've come to know and love. It's quite short but in a good way.

[Jelan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent page-turner. Interesting, but not too mentally taxing. I don't remember what or who led me to Stella Rimington, but I'll turn to her again when I need some good relaxing reading.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75* I agree with another reviewer who referenced the excessive number of characters, and the failure to develop them.... confusing and unnecessary.
The plot was thinly disguised and some of the dialogue was bland.
This book was recommended to me, but was not up to the usual standards for recommendations.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like a good spy book. Finished it in a day avoiding my dissertation.

[BOOKLOVER EB · Rating 3 out of 5]

In "Moscow Sleepers," Stella Rimington deals with such topical issues as illegal immigration and the use of computer hacking to undermine democratic institutions. At a meeting with Miles Brookhaven, the CIA Station Head at the U. S. Embassy in London, Peggy Kingsolving, a member of MI5's counterespionage branch, learns that a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Vermont, Lars Petersen, recently passed away. This is of interest to Peggy's boss and mentor, Liz Carlyle, who supervises a counterespionage team. Carlyle has reason to believe that Petersen was involved in a clandestine mission on behalf of Russia's Federal Security Service. Liz hopes to find out more from Mischa Bebchuk, a Russian army officer and paid source who has been funneling information to the West. In addition, MI6 plans to dispatch one of their agents, Bruno Mackay, to Moscow to recruit Mischa's brother, Boris.

This book is set in the UK, Berlin, and Moscow, and the cast is so large that it is sometimes difficult to remember who everyone one is and what his or her role is in the proceedings. Liz meets with Mischa, who is more nervous than usual, and eventually it comes to light that Russians are smuggling young refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere into Germany and England to study Information Technology. The Russians are up to something, but exactly what they are trying to accomplish is unclear.

Rimington's vast experience in MI5 adds verisimilitude to her description of how intelligence services operate. Unfortunately, the dialogue is often stilted, the characters are thinly drawn, and the plot generates little excitement. In addition, Rimington pads her novel with numerous descriptions of people's looks and clothing choices. Chief Constable Richard Pearson of Suffolk, a possible romantic interest for Liz, teams up with her to figure out what Putin's emissaries are up to and, if possible, shut them down. The narrative involves clandestine surveillance; jockeying for advantage among the higher-ups in the CIA, MI5, and MI6; the power of the press to embarrass and, in some cases, bring down government officials; and surprisingly inept villains. The book's strengths are its authenticity and relevance, but the lackluster writing fails to engage us intellectually and emotionally.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sleeper agents show up in spy novels or on TV far more than they do in real life. Sixty years ago, Richard Condon's bestselling novel, The Manchurian Candidate, exposed the concept to a wide audience. The FX television series The Americans (2013-2018) portrays a Russian married couple near Washington DC during the Reagan Administration. Both Elizabeth and Philip Jennings sleep around and commit murder with abandon in pursuit of intelligence for the KGB. The development of the series was reportedly triggered by the news in 2010 that the FBI had uncovered a network of ten Russian sleeper agents in the U.S. Ironically, later media reports revealed that the agents had accomplished little if anything of value to their handlers. Now comes Stella Rimington, former director of MI5, with an interesting new twist on the concept. The Moscow Sleepers is her tenth Liz Carlyle novel.

Far more than in most other spy novels, the books of the Liz Carlyle series typically highlight collaboration among many different intelligence agencies. Liz directs the counterintelligence division at MI5. But she invariably works with MI6, the CIA, and sometimes the French and German intelligence services in the course of her investigations. And in The Moscow Sleepers, the German BfV joins MI6, the CIA, and MI5 in the act. Interagency squabbles enliven the action.

Russian sleeper agents in Vermont, Germany, and England?

At first, Liz struggles to understand what's going on. In Burlington, Vermont, a computer engineering professor is on his deathbed at a hospice. According to the FBI, he's a Russian sleeper agent. Meanwhile, in Hamburg, Germany, we learn that an official in the European Union's immigration section was placed there by the Russians. His wife is the head of a school for immigrants who are somehow tied to the man in Vermont. And another school, in rural England, has recently been bought by an unknown owner and may in some way be connected to Hamburg. Even with the assistance of her own agent in place in Moscow and the combined resources of MI6 and the CIA, Liz is in the dark.

[D.B. John · Rating 2 out of 5]

The jacket hypes this yarn as a 'white-knuckle ride through the dark underbelly of international intelligence, simmering political animosities and global intelligence...'

That's quite far off the mark. The actual story is adrenalin free, almost wholly lacking in jeopardy, and weighed down by some achingly mundane dialogue. Even with the sharper edit this badly needed, it's hard to see how such a woefully unexciting story got waved through to published book.

An alert editor would surely have picked up on some of the lazy literary devices: confiding in a colleague whose husband just happens to work for MI5, overhearing conversations, etc.

There are some interesting insights about allied intelligence services co-operating against Russia, but one would expect that given the author's background. There's very little tradecraft, and zero feel for the hacking/cyber espionage angle of the story, despite the jacket's subhead: 'in an online world, Liz Carlyle must learn to leave no trace...'

By the time we reach the spooky boarding school in Suffolk, with mysterious goings-on at the nearby coast, I felt we were in a Famous Five adventure. I raced to the end hoping the whole thing would be salvaged by a twist. There wasn't one.

Do modern police forces really use antiquated words like 'ring' and 'dial' when referring to the phone?
In what conceivable way were these child-prodigy cyber-hackers deprived by not having writing paper and stamps in their school shop?

I wanted to like the book, as the concept of hostile sleepers is utterly intriguing, but this was thin stuff.

[John McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stella Rimington is the real thing insofar as describing espionage--she was Director General of MI5. The events she portrays consistently resonated with me as authentic and the situations her characters encounter seem real to me.

Espionage 'sleepers' are recruited and placed by their masters so that they are unobtrusive and fit in well with the culture to which they are assigned. They marry, often have children and may sing in a church choir, have jobs in the community, and seem to have been forgotten about, but the day comes when they 'awake' from their slumber and are called into service. Their success comes from not being noticed during the period when they are at rest. Rimington lets us try to solve the multiple riddles, but she is very good at explaining why these mysterious situations are set up by espionage services and how each aspect and decision creates another potential dilemma. She even hints at what Mick Herron calls London Rule Number 1: cover your ass.

This is where Rimington gets it right, I think, where the authenticity of the fictional (maybe, maybe not) events she describes rings true. The only quirk in the book was the unnecessary and, frankly, quite boring descriptions and dialogue around food. Jason Mathews, the former espionage agent who wrote the Red Sparrow trilogy spent so much literary real estate discussing and describing food and restaurants, and (ugh) talking about food that I was left with the impression that those involved in espionage and counter-espionage activities weighed in excess of 350 pounds.

Aside from that one quirk, though, I enjoyed this fast, easy, and interesting story.

[daniel sinclair · Rating 5 out of 5]

overall outstanding:

i worked as a city administrator for 20yrs and was in the army reserves. i retired and worked for DoS in the middle east for 11yrs mostly in iraq/afghanistan.

for me (US citizen) i read maybe 4 or 5 of "intelligence" or "foreign intrigue" a year. i have found the majority, but not the vast majority-are so watered down and "socialized" near nothing-for the any reader to spend $10 and enter a near fantasy land of details, plots and exploits.

some are written as IF it is a novel designed out of Xbox "shoot" them up games and story's.

SO: i read and get a feel and IF i read one book and that author (and i can tell) has been there and done that and has now written a fictional but situationally realistic story and actors--then i am "in". i know what they can reveal and what they cannot, and you can write much on "open source" information and spycraft.

i have a preference for NON US former agents who write. i believe most of them (former US agents) are the "fictional" writers and i rather learn a perspective for a french, british or middle eastern (isreali) former agent that wrote and there are more than a few.

ms. rimington is spot on with story, characters, information and phrases and situations that i the reader knows she "knows" what she is talking and writing about. look no farther

for some reason i got the book and it was the tenth in the series. so my next will be the first and work my way back up.

[Fiona Stocker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the fact that Stella Rimington's name is now the biggest feature on her front covers. Deservedly so. It assures you of a solid, detailed, pleasing read.
This was a great story with familiar characters from the past books making appearances. And Liz Carlyle is back with her usual philosophical take on life and sharp minded spook ways. Nothing not to love.
The story cracks on at a great pace and I loved it all the way through - almost. In the final chapter or two there's a recap of the back story, a meeting in which the main characters go over what were the motivations of the people they were investigating. I found this quite stilted as a device. But eminently forgiveable.
I first read Rimington because I wanted spy thrillers, or any sort of mystery book, which didn't resort to gore and autopsies and bodies. Rimington is all about the deduction, the intelligence, the intellectual chase. It's brilliant, with deep insights into the world of spying and spooks, given her past career, and without the tawdry casual misogyny of what I've read of le Carre.
Reaching for the others in the series once again, definitely books to have on the shelf rather than borrow from the library.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of the more formulaic/traditional spy thrillers may not like how this ends. Don't forget: Stella Rimington was an intelligence officer for quite some time. Without being able to read her mind, I'm hypothesizing that the way this operation unfolds is probably closer to how such operations unfold in real life. Here we see her hero Liz Carlyle collaborating with faces old and new. From the former, her colleagues and counterparts at MI-5 and -6, respectively, as well as one of her most prized assets in the Russian Bloc. And let's not forget Liz's slow-burn flame Richard Pearson, now of the Suffolk Constabulary. As for the latter, Liz meets up with MI-6 officers in Berlin and Brussels. Yes, this operation starts as ostensibly separate pieces stretching from Burlington, Vermont to the Moscow 'burbs with Central European stops in between. It's fascinating to watch it come together, sometimes with the shoe-leather grit and persistence of agents in the field and, almost as often, through pure happenstance, with the right asset or officer being in the right place at the right time.

My only wish is that the villains had gotten more "love" in the form of character development so that we could have understood their motivation a bit more.

[Becky Motew · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars for the whole series

This is #10 in the Liz Carlyle episodes and I am officially caught up! That statement is true in both senses, I might add--up to date with Liz C and completely caught up in the story.

SR's pace is not breathless. It's not frenetic. It's as fast as it needs to be, one might even say it's a bit bureaucratic in places(and who better would know about that ). Liz has to check with her own people, various MI6 potentates including the well dressed and ever-wily Geoffrey Fane, and even with the Americans, CIA and FBI. Liz is a consensus builder and follows the rules. But she gets her spy and keeps just about everybody happy.

The tradecraft in these books is outstanding. Surveillance and counter surveillance, I so love the A4 team! "I've got him!" they whisper into their hidden microphones. "I've got eyeball!"
CCTV followup helps them now and then when it shows, say, a Russian agent leaving a newspaper in a bin and then another agent picking it up. "Bingo!" is the cry.

Ancillary characters are excellent, including Peggy Kinsolving. My only question is whatever happened to Charles Wetherby, supposedly the love of Liz's life?

I could sit and read these all day and I hope SR is working on another one.

[Chris Hawkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having now read all of the books in this series, they’re very definitely dropping off a cliff. The characters aren’t developing at all, if anything more time is devoted to regurgitating their past exploits than fleshing them out more, and the more books in the series the more rehashing there is.

Every new character introduced seems to just be a new name for a predictable caricature used in a previous novel. There certainly appears to be a deficit in the originality department.

The plot itself doesn’t seem to make any sense, and even as the completely unsatisfying and improbable explanation is reeled off at the end, it feels more like an apology than anything.

I quite enjoyed the first few books in the series, but everything has become more and more formulaic since. This felt very much like a contractual obligation rather than a story the author felt worth writing.

I feel I should add I just read Lethal White yesterday (if you want a book that can actually keep you hooked, with suspense and intricate character relationships, much recommended), which probably skews things against this book somewhat. It certainly does not live up to expectation though.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book, in return for a fair and honest review.

An enjoyable entry in the Liz Carlyle series. I've enjoyed all of the books so far, and was delighted to see a new one!

One particularly appealing part of this book is that it involves the cyber warfare that is so important now. While we certainly have some of the "traditional" cloak and dagger spy v. spy type action, a central plot here is the use of bright teenage refugees to be trained as computer hackers. So, up to date issues, with the growing number of refugees (in this case, particularly from Syria) and Russia's use of computer technology.

Another appealing part of the book is the growth of characters. We're seeing Liz dealing and perhaps getting beyond her grief over Martin Seurat, moving to a new home, perhaps starting a new relationship. Peggy, too, has moved past Tim, the boyfriend who created such trouble for her previously, and is moving ahead professionally. Even Bruno MacKay is developing.

The characters are growing in interesting ways, and the plot is staying up to date - the series continues to be intriguing, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

[Greville Waterman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love good spy thrillers and read them voraciously and yet I had never read one of the previous nine books in the Liz Carlyle series.

I was looking forward to putting this omission right but however hard I tried - and believe me, I tried very hard - I just could not engage with "The Moscow Sleepers."

Stella Remington obviously knows everything there is to know about the world of espionage from her own personal experience and yet, and yet, to me the book never really took off, there was something missing.

Of tradecraft there was much evidence, and high impressive it was but of characters, there was very little.

I know from personal experience just how hard it is to write a book but in my opinion this book is just a bit clumsy and clunky and I found it hard to engage and I never really felt a connection or even a real sense of interest in any of the characters.

I will try another of her books but I found this just a bit insipid.

[Brittany Larson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free ARC of this book from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This was my first Liz Carlyle mystery that I've read, though they've been on my radar as something I wanted to check out for awhile now. I found this to be a smart, fun global espionage mystery. There were a lot of characters to keep track of, which was difficult at first, but I think that would have been a lot easier if I'd read others in the series. The mystery felt modern yet timeless in some way. Liz Carlyle seems capable and tough, yet somehow I wanted more from her throughout this read for some reason; more personality, more introspection, or just something. Parts of this were quite predictable, yet there were a few major surprises along the way, so it kept me on my toes.

I would certainly read another Liz Carlyle mystery, mostly because I want to know more about her. Fun and smart, and I enjoyed the broad array of characters from far-reaching places.