Excellent beginning and middle. Maudlin ending. ( )

I liked this book a lot. It was well written and fast moving, I plan to read more of this author. ( )

Thomas Kell has been sidelined by SIS following a CIA torture case which he witnessed. His boss, Ameila Levene brings him back into the fold to investigate a former colleague's suspicious death in Turkey and a potential mole betraying operations there. The author makes good use of his inside knowledge to portray what seems a potentially authentic byzantine plot of cross and double-cross amongst a well-drawn cast of characters. ( )

Book was a little difficult to get through with all the foreign words. Was difficult trying to pronounce them. I did enjoy the book over all. ( )

This book marked the welcome return of Thomas Kell, who first appeared in A Foreign Country. In that book he had been languishing in a sort of limbo, awaiting a possible court appearance as Officer X for his role in the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of a terrorist suspect. He had, however, been instrumental in the successful rescue of the son of the head of MI5, which had led to his gradual rehabilitation back into the Service.

As the sequel opens, an operation involving MI5 in Turkey had gone awry, with an agent crossing into the country being intercepted in the most brutal manner. Soon afterwards the officer supervising the operation dies in a crash while piloting a hired private plane. Then a highly valued intelligent asset is murdered in the street. It becomes very difficult to believe that these might all be coincidental.

The dead MI5 officer was Paul Wallinger, who in addition to having been a close friend of Kell had also been MI5’s chief representative in counter espionage operations in Turkey, as well as the occasional lover of Amelia Levine, Head of MI5, known officially as ‘C’. Amelia commissions Kell to investigate Walliger’s death, as aprt of the gradual rehabilitation process back onto the books of MI5 following the rendition incident.

Kell had known Wallinger well, and was shocked to learn of his death. He is even more astounded to learn from ‘C’ that there seems to be a leak and that intelligence operations out of Turkey might have been compromised. Kell’s investigation is, therefore, partially to exonerate Wallinger. Of course, being Kell, it is not long before he has managed to embroil himself in additional complications, including starting a relationship with Wallinger’s daughter.

The plot is well constructed, and Cumming gives intriguing insight in intelligence tradecraft. Charles Cumming always delivers a very sound plot and pleasing characters – I find Thomas Kell one of the most empathetic characters in spy fiction, although that may simply be because he seems to share so many of my own literary tastes. Still, it is always gratifying these days to find any protagonist who values reading as a pastime!

I think that Cumming is rapidly assuming pole position in the jockeying to take on John le Carre’s mantle as greatest living spy novelist. ( )