Alias Emma

 By: Ava Glass

Location: FIC GLA

Genre: Mystery Thriller

"But every man everywhere, no matter how much you train him, underestimates a smiling young woman."

She's on her first major operation with a shadowy government organisation known only as 'the Agency', assigned to track down and save an innocent man wanted by the Russian government.

All Emma has to do is bring him in to MI6 before sunrise, and before an assassination team gets to him first.

But the Russians have hacked the city's CCTV cameras. There are spies all over London searching for them. And Michael Primalov doesn't want to be rescued.

As London sleeps, a battle is taking place on its streets as Emma fights to keep Michael alive. Along the way she finds she has more enemies than she realised. And more strength than she suspected.

But what sort of reception awaits them if and when they do get to MI6?

And why do the Russians seem to be ahead of them every step of the way? 

Review by Yvonne

I do love a good spy thriller story and especially one that involves different government agencies. I think most of us have a mistrust of these agencies and so it always makes sense that they are involved in some plot, conspiracy or cover-up.

Emma Makepeace, a spy for the British government has not long been in this job. She is not a rookie, she already has experience as she served as an intelligence officer in the forces. SHe also has an interesting family background.

As the synopsis suggests, she has been tasked with finding and convincing an innocent man that his life is at risk. It is her job to get him to a safe place. What should be a basic job, suddenly becomes a flight through and under the streets of London. Trying to evade capture and being seen, is very difficult when London has cameras everywhere.

This is a fast-paced read, a quick intro to Emma and that's it, straight into the action. The story does have a little back and forth as far as timelines and people go, not much but it does give some valuable additional information. There is not a huge cast of characters in this story, some don't even have a name. This makes sense given the genre of the story.

As I mentioned conspiracy goes hand in hand with spies and governments, so this story ticked a lot of boxes for me. There are several things on the go and it was interesting to see how the author would play this one out. I really enjoyed the route she took and it felt right. This is a story that is full of mystery as well as crime set mainly in London.

This is a cracking read and I am hoping this is the start of a series. The author has left the opportunity to make this an option.

This is one for those who like a fast-paced, spy thriller that has that edge-of-the-seat frenetic energy to it, It is one I would definitely recommend.