Transcription

by Kate Atkinson

This is the third book that I have read by this author.  I enjoyed the first two, I found them quirky and unique but interesting.

This books is about a young British woman, Julie Armstrong, who is recruited to work for MI5.  Initially she is only a transcriber.   She listens in to conversations in the next room where a British agent, who is pretending to be a Nazi sympathizer, is meeting with Brits who are nazi sympathizers.  They want to find out what the sympathizers know or are planning to do, at times they feed them false information.

There is a bit of intrigue within the various bosses at MI5, one of the superiors asks Julie if she has noticed anything suspicious about her immediate boss but she doesn't tell him anything.  Her boss tells her that she shouldn't trust anyone.

Eventually she is recruited to be a spy, meeting with one of the key female nazi sympathizers.  Her actions eventually result in that women and others being arrested.

At one point one of the sympathizers comes to her office/apartment and discovers what is going on.  She and two other agents kill the woman and dispose of her body.

The book jumps around in time.  It starts in 1981 with Julie being hit by car when she is crossing the street, then it goes to 1940 and at times to 1950.  After the war Julie gets a job with the BBC.  Other former agents are also working there.  She is frightened when she gets an anonymous note saying she will pay for what she did.  She also finds that once you have been a spy you cannot leave that behind.
She is asked to provide a safehouse for a Czech defector who seems to have some knowledge about the Russian nuclear weapons program.  She and a fellow agent lose this man to unknown people.  Her boss loses his job because it is found out that he is homosexual.  He had proposed to her, probably to try to cover up his homosexuality.

One of the people who is after her is a foreign woman who was acting as a British Agent.  The woman's dog was entrusted to Julie and her boss but while they both loved the dog and took care of it, it ran away from them them.  Julie thought the woman had died in Germany but the woman reappears and several times attacks Julie for killing her dog.  She is a bit deranged.

However, it does seem that other people are after her.  When she tries to leave England there are people trying to stop her at the train station.  Her former boss comes to her aid, getting her way paid on a freighter which takes her to Europe.  She apparently settled in Italy and had a son from an liaison there.  However, one day two men arrive at her door and take her back to England.  She is never charged with anything so you have to wonder why they bothered to bring her back.

It was an interesting story but not as engaging as the other two I read.