PLAYING WITH COBRAS - Book review

 

Craig Thomas’s ninth Patrick Hyde thriller (of ten) Playing with Cobras was published in 1993.

MI6 agent-in-place Phillip Cass is having an affair with Sereena, one of India’s screen goddesses who also happens to be the wife of Mr V.K. Sharmar, the prospective new Prime Minister. V.K. has a powerful brother Prakesh who is a dangerous ‘Mr Fixit’.  Cass discovers that the Sharmars have only been able to finance their rise to prominence by smuggling drugs on a grand scale. Instead of merely killing Cass, the Sharmars frame him for the murder of Sereena with the intention of embarrassing Britain. Peter Shelley has taken over from Aubrey as DG and recruits Hyde to return to the fold to investigate Cass’s case. Cass was planning on taking a holiday in Australia with his girlfriend Ros but feels compelled to intervene on Cass’s behalf since Cass has previously saved his life! Hyde soon appreciates that Cass is innocent but before he can further put further questions to his fellow agent, Cass disappears.

The thriller is predominantly about Hyde and Ros getting involved in locating Cass and getting him out of the country, while in the process acquiring evidence about Cass’s innocence and the Sharmars’ drug activities.

Throughout, Thomas provides a great deal of colour and visual descriptions to put you in the scene.

He has a knack with detailed observation, too: ‘The flight deck lay on its side – like the broken egg in the Bosch painting, he thought: his imagination affected as if by some nervous tic rather than horror at the scene (of the terrorist-caused airplane crash). It was hundreds of yards away, cordoned off, surrounded by the ants of the accident investigators and the police’ (p48).

There’s plenty of tension and close shaves and the pace never lets up.

This thriller has more than enough thrills to please fans of the genre.

SEA LEOPARD - Book review

Craig Thomas is on top form with his seventh novel, the thriller Sea Leopard published in 1981.

This adventure again features Kenneth Aubrey, Deputy Director of British Intelligence, and Patrick Hyde, one of his field agents.

The book begins with a map of the North Sea, UK, Scandinavia and Russia and the Barents Sea. This is followed by documents from Plessey, the weapons manufacturer, the SIS, Ministry of Defence and the US Navy Defence Department, all relating to the installation of a new anti-sonar system for submarines, ‘Leopard’.

The nuclear submarine HMS Proteus has the system installed and is running trials at sea when a distress call is detected.

At about this time a search was underway for Leopard’s inventor, Quinn, who has gone missing. Hyde is attempting to track down Quinn. Soviet agents are attempting to abduct Quinn’s daughter, Tricia, in the hope that she will lead them to Quinn’s whereabouts.

The distress call is a trap and the captain of Proteus, Commander Lloyd falls for it.

The tension mounts as a number of Soviet surface ships and submarines play cat-and-mouse with the Proteus – for their sonar is incapable of detecting the British submarine, thanks to ‘Leopard’.

Ingenious methods are deployed by Russian Valery Ardenyev, office in charge of the Soviet Underwater Special Ops Unit to incapacitate the submarine and take the crew captive and then learn everything about the Leopard system.

A rescue mission is then mounted by Aubrey, using USN special agent Ethan Clark.

The suspense mounts, switching from Hyde’s search in England, Ardenyev’s bold assault in inclement weather, Aubrey’s altercations with Ministers and the Navy’s hierarchy, Commander Lloyd’s concern for the safety of his vessel and crew, and Clark’s near-impossible mission on the edge of the Arctic Circle.

 A gripping thriller that time has not spoiled in the slightest. 

JADE TIGER - Book review

Craig Thomas’s espionage thriller Jade Tiger was published in 1982 and subsequently reprinted at least thirteen times; my edition is dated 2000. (I’m gradually catching up on my backlog of ‘to-be-read’ books!) He was a very popular author in the 1980s and 1990s.

His debut novel Rat Trap was successful, but it pales by comparison with this outing. By this book, Thomas has improved in style and in conveying tension and suspense and characterisation.

The story begins with a Chinese officer from the Ministry of Public Tranquillity plotting operation Jade Tiger with an unnamed American.

Then a Chinese officer, Colonel Wei, ‘walks in’ to British Intelligence in Hong Kong. British SIS veteran Kenneth Aubrey is tasked with interrogating the man, for the Colonel apparently possesses potentially destabilising information about a high-placed German politician, Zimmerman. In 1940, when he was a wet-behind-the-ears spy Aubrey knew Zimmerman. He’d captured him but it was during the BEF retreat to Dunkirk. There developed a grudging companionship as they evaded strafing Messerschmitts and bombs. The war-time flashbacks are very effective.

Apparently, during a cultural visit to China Zimmerman was drugged while visiting Wuhan and then interrogated by the Chinese, who learned of his allegiance to the KGB and the USSR. (Wuhan is not sinister in this tale, however!)

Aubrey is ageing now; he has featured in 10 or 11 books; he appeared in three or four before this one. He is accompanied by Australian Patrick Hyde as his bodyguard. In Hong Kong they meet up with the CIA representative Buckholtz who is keen to take Wei off their hands.

Aubrey is the old school. He owes his life to Zimmerman so he needs to confirm that Wei is telling the truth about Zimmerman being a mole for the Soviets. At risk is the Berlin Treaty, the reunification of Germany, the pulling down of the Berlin Wall (in 1982).

The investigation also involves a Chinese-American CIA agent, Liu, who is inserted into Shanghai to verify Wei’s revelations. These are the days before China had embraced the ubiquitous facial recognition cameras. Liu’s attempts to obtain proof and avoid detection are well told and suitably tense and realistic.

Aubrey and Hyde follow a trail to Australia where an old associate of Zimmerman still lives. Again, the details and descriptions are first rate.

Throughout, Aubrey, Hyde and Buckholtz are shadowed and even on occasion attacked by Hyde’s nemesis, the Soviet Petrunin. Hyde and Petrunin have had previous encounters; the fact that I haven’t read these did not spoil my enjoyment of the book.

Like The Day of the Jackal, we’re aware that there’s a failure at the heart of the story; for we know that the Treaty must fail since the fall of the Wall did not occur until 1989. But that doesn’t matter; we want to know what happens to the individuals concerned, which is a measure of a good writer.

Sadly, in 2011 Craig Thomas died of pneumonia, aged 68, having also suffered from leukaemia.