At Risk

Acknowledgements

I have dreamed for years of writing a thriller and have had the main character, Liz, in my mind all that time. She has changed and developed as the years have gone by and as I have changed. She is obviously in large part autobiographical but she also draws on a number of other female intelligence officers I have met during my professional career. The other main characters in the book are entirely imaginary, as is the story. They first emerged in a conversation over dinner at the Winstub Gilg in Mittelbergheim Alsace in June 2001. I have to thank John Rimington, who was sharing the dinner, as well as the Gilg Tokay Pinot Gris, which stoked the conversation and the imagination. The art of novelist and that of intelligence officer are very different, whatever some people may think, and had it not been for the perseverance and encouragement of Sue Freestone, my publisher at Hutchinson, I would not have been able to turn myself from one into the other. Huge thanks are also due to Luke Jennings whose help with the research and the writing made it all happen.

Stella Rimington