A Divided Spy

Starred review from December 12, 2016
In bestseller Cumming’s nuanced, suspenseful third Thomas Kell novel (after 2014’s A Colder War), the London-based former MI6 agent, who’s been a private citizen for 12 months since the assassination in Istanbul of his girlfriend and fellow spy, Rachel Wallinger, receives a call from Harold Mowbray, a private contractor with whom he has worked on several missions. Mowbray wants to have a face-to-face chat, and they agree to meet at a Middle Eastern restaurant that evening. Over dinner, Mowbray reveals that during a recent vacation with his wife to an Egyptian Red Sea resort he spotted Russian SVR officer Alexander Minasian, whom Kell holds personally responsible for Rachel’s death. Kell sets up a trap using Minasian’s lover, Bernhard Riedle, and persuades his old boss, SIS chief Amelia Levene, to help him capture Minasian. The hows and whys of the mission slowly unfold in a perfectly constructed plot that proves once again that Cumming is among today’s top spy thriller writers. After a complicated, riveting finale, a moving coda suggests that readers may have seen the last of Thomas Kell. Say it ain’t so, Charles. 75,000 announced first printing; author tour. Agent: Luke Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit.

December 15, 2016
A British agent lures a closeted Russian superspy into the open by befriending his spurned secret lover. Dedicated MI6 agent Thomas Kell (A Colder War, 2014, etc.) receives an intriguing call from freelance intelligence operative Harold Mowbray, who worked with him on a failed mission in which Russian spy Alexander Minasian turned CIA mole Ryan Kleckner into a double agent and benefited when Kleckner funneled many valuable Western secrets to Moscow. Now that Mowbray's stumbled upon the juicy information that Minasian's just ended an affair with German architect Bernhard Riedle, Kell sees an opportunity for sweet revenge. Backed by his handler, Amelia, he undertakes a complex and dangerous plan to befriend the German. He hires two men to stage a fake mugging of Riedle and comes to his rescue. The two men stay up late, talking together far into the night. Riedle bares his soul, referring to his Russian lover as Dmitri. MI6, monitoring Riedle's communication with Minasian, learns that he plans a visit to square things with Riedle. The arrival of Minasian's wife, Svetlana Eremenko, in London further complicates the operation. A daring and completely unexpected attack changes everything, raising the stakes and placing Kell in a perilous position. Shahid Khan, a menacing Egyptian whose movements have been peppered throughout the narrative in short chapters, arrives in London and promptly assumes a more central role. The prolific Cumming insufficiently preps the reader on the hero's back story but writes with ruefully brittle intelligence and keeps the twists coming.

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Starred review from January 1, 2017
Spies have been coming in from the cold for decades, of course, most notably in le Carre but also in the work of many other espionage novelists of the last 50 years. In fact, one could say that disenchantment with the secret world and the toll it takes on the individual human life is the quintessential theme of the modern spy novel.Add Cumming's Thomas Kell to the growing list of chilled-to-the-bone spies craving warmth. After appearing to have made his break from MI6 following the death of his lover, Rachel, killed by the Russians in A Colder War (2014), Kell can't resist the opportunity to extract some sweet revenge. Learning that Russian spymaster Alexander Minasian, who may have green-lighted Rachel's murder, has been observed having a lover's quarrel with another man, Kell, working on his own, sets up a honey trap to ensnare his prey. It all goes according to plan until it doesn't. Gradually, Kell finds himself sympathizing with Minasian, who, like Kell himself, is just another victim of the whole sorry dance of sex and yearning, of love and betrayal. Eventually, with both MI6 and Minasian's Soviet masters in the game and tasting blood, Kell sets out to carve a separate peace for two spies on opposite sides who have realized that the profession they had chosen has left both of them broken and compromised and alone. Cumming not only tells a moving human story here, he also constructs an airtight espionage plot full of unanticipated twists and leading up to a perfectly orchestrated finale.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Cumming's previous seven novels have all been successes, but this could be his breakthrough book. A large first printing and major marketing campaign will help.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)