'Operation 10' by Hardiman Scott

Hardiman Scott's justifiably forgotten and out of print first novel is, ostensibly, a fast-paced thriller about Margaret Thatcher being kidnapped by IRA terrorists. I heard of it via an advert at the back of my old edition of A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin, and purchased a copy in the hope that it had fallen out of print due to the subject matter not being topical anymore, and possibly having become distasteful in the aftermath of the Brighton bombing, rather than as a sign of it lacking quality.

I gave up at the halfway mark.

Part of the problem for the book is that the blurb does an excellent job of getting you ready for a fast-paced, but probably trashy, thriller which opens with Thatcher being kidnapped and then excitedly follows the various characters as they try to discover her whereabouts, negotiate with the terrorists, investigate leads, perhaps reveal that one of her special advisors had been an IRA agent in deep cover or something - y'know, standard trashy thriller stuff. 

Alternatively, it might have been a more thoughtful book of political intrigue and ideology, exploring the complexity of the Troubles, and perhaps posing a direct challenge to Thatcher's stance at the time. The blurb's description of the 'the price on her head is outrageously high, and the government refuses to pay' could perhaps hint at a questioning of Thatcher's belief in the price mechanism and market economics.

The book is in fact neither of these things, it is ruthlessly boring. 

I gave up at the halfway mark because Margaret Thatcher had not yet been kidnapped. At least half of the novel is devoted to following the IRA members as they meticulously plan and rehearse the kidnapping, over and over and over again, for months. And it feels like months. The terrorists are not even interesting characters - they have a few character traits each, so they are slightly more than one-dimensional.

A side-plot involves a Special Branch Superintendent worrying - for months - that a major IRA operation will be happening soon, because nothing has happened for a while and his informants have revealed that the IRA cells across the country have been instructed to lie low for a bit. We periodically check in on him, and discover that he is still worrying and that nothing has happened.

At the halfway mark, both the reader and the characters themselves are still waiting for the promised story to start. Chapter 9 begins (page 106 of 252) with the date for the kidnapping finally being chosen, and the terrorists then finding stuff to kill time 'just to pass the hours'. We then cut to the side-plot and learn that for the superintendent 'also the time passed slowly' BECAUSE NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

Time passes slowly for both the reader and the characters in this supposedly pacey and gripping thriller. I became so bored and so uninterested that I didn't care enough to continue to find out when the story would actually start and whether it would somehow improve in quality once it did. Time passed so slowly while reading this that I struggle believe that I only read half of a short novel when it felt so excruciatingly long.