The promiscuity of my curiosity means it is not just one podcast but a diverse range of them: science, history, secularism, current affairs, politics, philosophy, religion inter alia.
Having acquired a taste for them, engaging with a podcast is just like reading a book while walking. The information is absorbed via the ears rather than the eyes. Whether more of what is absorbed is retained is another matter, something for the experts to work out.
Recently, I took up the suggestion of a friend, Jake, to listen to audio books. I updated my library membership and within minutes was listening to Red Station as a sort of trial run, mostly as I walked the dog along the Boyne, and occasionally before I fell asleep. The problem with that is that I never got to the end of whatever chapter I was listening to and would have to go back over it the following day. Still, as good a night cap as a whiskey.
Harry for some reason is a name I have come to associate with good crime fiction, in this case a spy novel. Often the line between crime and spying is so blurred that to insist on any distinction seems pedantic. Harry Hole, Harry Bosch, Harry Pearse of the TV Drama, Spooks and now Harry Tate. Because it is in the espionage genre, Harry Pearse is the image that springs to mind as the reader follows the exploits of Harry Tate. There is something to be be said for having a face to focus on. It builds peaks and troughs on the otherwise bland flatness of a mugshot, accentuating that identifying characteristic so unique to humans.
In the brilliant Mick Herron novels there is a place of internal exile for MI5 operatives who mess up: it is called Slough House, or more derisorily Slow Horses. In Red Station it is not as far out as Siberia but distant nonetheless: South Ossetia, somewhere in Georgia.
The faux pas up was not exactly a mess up but more typically a cover up. A drugs bust had gone wrong, resulting in fatalities. Heads had to roll, and in the kiss up kick down structure that is the British intelligence services, somebody on the ground was always going to take the hit. Golly, dear boy, what else are the buggers there for?
Tate was never the type to go silently into the night. Once he copped on to what the real purpose of Red Station was and the ultimate destination of those who ended up there, he castled for defensive purposes before beginning his foray out into the board, moving adroitly and unafraid to lop the head off a king.
Not long into South Ossetia, it becomes glaringly obvious to Harry that he is being tailed. So, it seems is everybody else. Yet those spying on the spies have a mysterious provenance of their own. The story concludes not in South Ossetia but in England close to the HQ of MI6. But not before the grand tussle is fought out in the lanes and countryside of foreign climes. Trickery, deceit, assassination, dubious Georgians - all go into the mix.
Adrian Magson, 2010, Red Station. Publisher: Severn House Publishers. ISBN-13: 978-0727869395
The rise of the pawns was a phenomenon class snobbery was averse to. The grandmasters of espionage found life not so grand after all when faced with an adversary more resilient than they had reckoned on. Would the Queen fall to protect the King? Marcella Rudmann and Lord Bellingham might just have contrasting ideas about that.
From the get-go, a pacey thriller, in which the mockery of the security services is the persistent undertone. The men and women in suits are so unlikeable that they are set up to fail. When they do, the reader can burp with approval, the appetite satiated.
The pull of the audio book is the dexterity with which the narrator delivers. The pitch and accentuation, the subversive mimicry of the toff establishment accent. They are all a literary delicacy that simply reading a book does not serve up.
Harry Tate survives to fight another day. His voice shall be heard again.
From the get-go, a pacey thriller, in which the mockery of the security services is the persistent undertone. The men and women in suits are so unlikeable that they are set up to fail. When they do, the reader can burp with approval, the appetite satiated.
The pull of the audio book is the dexterity with which the narrator delivers. The pitch and accentuation, the subversive mimicry of the toff establishment accent. They are all a literary delicacy that simply reading a book does not serve up.
Harry Tate survives to fight another day. His voice shall be heard again.
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