Typhoon

Starred review from August 31, 2009
In the tradition of old-school espionage fiction, Cumming (The Spanish Game
) lets character rather than plot carry this compelling thriller. William Lasker, a second-string agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service, takes on the job of writing a book about a rogue CIA plot against the People’s Republic of China. The action, which takes place mainly in Hong Kong and Shanghai, focuses on Joe Lennox, an SIS undercover agent in China, and an older CIA veteran, Miles Coolidge. Several months before the turnover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, a defector, Professor Wang Kaixuan, climbs out of the South China Sea and announces he has important secret information. After the professor disappears, Joe slowly learns the defector has become part of Typhoon, a secret CIA plan being run by Miles whose aim is to destabilize China. The conflict between Joe and Miles, both personal and professional, fuels this complex and satisfying novel.

September 15, 2009
An MI6 agent must balance the personal and the professional as he tries to thwart the American agent who stole the woman he loves.

Joe Lennox, a British agent operating under deep cover in Hong Kong, is everything Miles Coolidge, his CIA counterpart, is not. While Joe is soft spoken and calm, Miles is brash, loud and confrontational; while Joe has a conscience, both personally and professionally, Miles is unburdened by nagging thoughts of right and wrong. So when Miles plans to steal Joe's beautiful and charming girlfriend, he uses all the dirty tricks at his disposal. Not satisfied with wrecking Joe's personal life, Miles also steals a career-making asset from him, namely Professor Wang, a Han Chinese scholar with information about human-rights abuses carried out by the Chinese government against the Uighur population in Xinjiang. Joe is left heartbroken and adrift as the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British sovereignty to Chinese rule marks the end of his mission. Flash forward to 2008, when the Brits begin to suspect that the CIA is thinking about reviving a dangerous operation, code-named Typhoon, to undermine stability in China. All evidence points to Miles' involvement, so Joe, given his personal history with the rogue CIA agent, is just the man to do a little digging, provided he can keep his personal feelings for his target—and his target's wife—from getting in the way of duty. The spy trade as rendered by Cumming (The Spanish Game, 2009, etc.) is all about uncertainty, caution, subtlety and a feel for human relationships, which rings truer, if less adrenaline-inducing, than the testosterone-soaked, knockout-karate-chops-to-the-necks-of-mujahideen approach favored by many of his peers. The tension here is delivered with style, grace and a great sense for the interpersonal, which provides a true sense of depth, as does Cumming's knack for writing about expat life in contemporary China in a way that feels very real.

A stately thriller for grown-ups.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 10, 2009
China's ethnic Uighurs, in the news now for their urgent push for autonomy, are the focus of this intricately plotted and masterfully rendered espionage thriller. At its most gut-wrenching, it is a tale of two agents, one British, one American, who lock horns in a deadly struggle over a woman and their honor. But Cumming's smart and sharp story line also revolves around a pair of extralegal plots in China to nail down big energy contracts for American interests while destabilizing the central power. Verdict In his third novel (after A Spy by Nature and The Spanish Game), Cumming uses the British handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the framework for a compelling story in which greed, hate, and terrorism swirl in a maelstrom. A sure bet for thriller fans. [Library marketing.]-Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2009
Cumming follows up on his much-praised The Spanish Game (2008) with another espionage novel, but this time on a bigger canvasan American neocon, a Halliburton-like construction company, and a grandiosely obstreperous CIA agent fomenting unrest in China by bankrolling the Muslim Uighur minority to stage terrorist attacks. The primary characters are Joe Lennox, a principled, young, and brilliant MI6 agent and Miles Coolidge, an older, equally brilliant, and bizarrely twisted and hedonistic CIA agent who steals Isabella, the love of Joes life. Justly praised for his complex characters, realistic details of the spy game, and evocative portraits of locales, Cumming seems to have expanded his repertoire into an almost Richard Condonesque satire. Although the book covers the period from 1997 and the British handover of Hong Kong to the years just prior to the Beijing Olympics, Cumming gleefully lampoons Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, neoconservatism, and the limitless cynicism of greed and power that characterized the Bush years. Typhoon is fine entertainment, and with recent ethnic clashes between the Uighurs and Han Chinese in the headlines, its also topical.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)