The Secretary
Lois Vale travels to Moscow to join British Embassy staff as a secretary to Minister Roger Waller, second in command to the ambassador, in 1958. Her undercover mission as an MI6 special operative: to learn whether there is an active traitor still at large. In the last few years two British diplomats have defected to Russia after being outed as Soviet agents and a current MI6 agent may have tipped them off. Lois’s assignment? Find out who is leaking embassy communications to the Soviets, be “a worm to catch a worm.” She has no safety net. If her role is uncovered, she herself will be branded a traitor.
The Secretary is based on the experiences of Lawrenson’s mother, Joy, who never spoke specifically about her work for MI6 but left a diary of her time at the Moscow Embassy in 1958. Each chapter leads with slightly edited entries from that diary, and the novel is a highly personal narrative. It reflects Lois’s feelings of quiet dread as she “lives on her nerves” worrying about every move she makes, observing without appearing to observe, and feeling uncertain in her romantic relationships and the man she comes to love.
It is also provocative, raising questions about “official truth,” enemies who operate not for the East or the West but in the middle, the “balance of terror” maintained by both sides, and the tactics of an international club of money, power, and control. Taut, edgy, thought-provoking, and at the same time private and emotionally revealing.
