Rodent Household

The Illegals, Shaun Walker
A history of the Russian illegal spy programme from the days of Lenin to the present, focusing on the lives of a number of known illegals and using them to explore the whole concept. Illegals, in spy parlance, being distinct from the kind of spies who are operating out of their embassy with diplomatic immunity and known to be Russian nationals, even if their official title of Second Trade Attache translates to KGB Chief - those ones are legals. Illegals are the other ones, the ones in the country with a passport and fake background that claims they are a French stocking salesman or whatever, who may live in their false identities for years or decades. The Russians were very keen on their illegals and set up elaborate and complex training programmes (though they did not in fact have an entire fake American town to practice being American in; they did have a fake American house full of American food and appliances to train on) and ran very long-term programmes to insert their agents into assorted countries, focusing on the USA but all over the globe. Though none of their efforts to breed their own second-generation illegals worked out: the KGB would send illegals as married couples, spouses chosen by the KGB, and in multiple cases they then had children together to maintain their cover, who had no idea their parents were not who they claimed to be. But none of those children worked out as KGB operatives when they were finally told about the reality of their parents' lives, since the main thing this sort of background does is massively traumatise you. Mostly the illegals didn't work out either, since having to live your entire life under a false identity with the threat of horrific punishment from the Russians if you go wrong one way and the threat of exposure and imprisonment from the country you're living in if you go wrong another way tends to put people under the kind of stress that leads to mental breakdown. Alcoholism was particularly common, along with massive paranoia and both physical and mental health breakdowns. This is one of the reasons they tried sending illegals as married couples to support each other, though it didn't help that much, and considering the amount of effort the Russians put into their illegal programme, they didn't get all that much out of it compared to their much more effective work persuading actual Westerners to support them. The book also goes into how illegals are currently being used by Russia, mostly online but also in person, in the current war, and how directly this follows on from the Cold War approach.

Anyway, I am also now watching The Americans for a heavily dramatised version of life as an illegal, and it is proving to be id candy and not wholly inaccurate, and I love Phillip and Elizabeth very much, though they are far more effective than any actual illegals ever were.


Checkmate to Murder, ERC Lorac
One of the British Library Crime Classics, a middle-of-the-road but readable murder mystery involving a group of artists in London during WW2. This had good characters and a fun plot of the classic 'break this alibi' style, where the alibi in question was that four people were all in the room together when the murder was committed, so obviously none of them could have done it. The chess theme in the title didn't obtrude too much on the plot - it's there if you want it but it wasn't particularly prominent - which was fine by me as I'm not that fascinated by chess. A good straightforward read that carries you along nicely.


All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses An Eye, Chris Brookmyre
A forty-something woman gets drafted as a James-Bond style secret agent for the black ops adventure of a lifetime. This was exactly as much fun as the premise suggests and then some. James Bond adventures in spades. When a scientist who's made a dangerous discovery gets kidnapped, who is going to be motivated enough and ruthless enough and unstoppable enough to do anything to get him back? His mum, of course. I loved it, spectacular mix of mid-life-crisis book and action thriller.


Be My Enemy, Chris Brookmyre
black_bentley, who knows me far too well, told me I'd like this and I'd especially love the character of Tim Vale, and, well, what can I say, I feel very known. This is one of a series but stands alone (and has some honestly unnecessary and annoying recaps of some of the other books in the series; I feel like a better editor would have drawn a red pen through the irrelevant multi-page reminiscing). The premise is, our hero the investigative journalist/unofficial detective has been invited to attend and report on the opening session of a new motivational team-building company which runs getaways where stressed executives go and shoot paintballs at each other while staying in a country house with good food and wine. However, some of the motivational team-building activities turn out to have a body count... Again, this is a fantastic premise and it's executed perfectly. And I did indeed adore Tim Vale as much as he deserved and then some, there's a guy who could go to dinner with Thomas Nightingale and have some real fun. It did have a high ick factor at various points, but it was great all the same.


HMS Defiant (1962)
A pretty solid Age of Sail film about a mutiny aboard the titular ship, parallel to the actual Spithead Mutiny, with a humane but somewhat ineffectual captain who has a sadistic and well-connected first officer he can't quite control, and a charismatic lower decks character organising the mutiny against them, but with the French also taking a hand. Well told and very watchable.


Rio (1939)
This one was the fault of tweague, who said it involved Basil Rathbone playing the villain/anti-hero, sweaty and malarial being carried through the jungle by his devoted henchman. Again, I am easily persuaded, and this did absolutely deliver on the villain/henchman front and the Basil Rathbone being melodramatically beautiful front. The plot otherwise didn't have much to it: our anti-hero Paul Reynard is a crooked financier with a beautiful wife who gets sent to a penal colony in Brazil when his financial swindling comes unstuck, and while he's in prison his beautiful wife eventually finds some less criminal but also less beautiful men to console herself. So Paul escapes from prison with Dirk's help - where we get our scenes of Paul collapsing ragged and filthy into Dirk's arms - and tries to murder his wife and her lover only Dirk kills him and then himself instead. For a short film - an hour twenty - it still felt like there was a lot of padding, especially Irene the beautiful wife having long long scenes of her singing in clubs, and also an equally long scene of a carnival in Rio. The only character with any common sense was Dirk, who spends half the film trying to persuade Paul that it's better to run away before they catch you and leave his unfaithful wife to do her own thing, in between proclaiming and comprehensively demontrating his undying loyalty. Paul relies on him but really needed to learn to listen to him and clearly would have done much better married to Dirk than to Irene.