Author: Charles Cumming

Publisher: Harper Collins

First published: 2012

Setting: France and Tunisia
Read in September 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.2

My Waterstones Review

“A pacey modern spy thriller – I want more!”

This is a modern gripping spy thriller with our hero, Tom Kell, an ex-MI6 agent engaged to track down Amelia Levene who has disappeared and in six weeks is due to become the first female MI6 chief. Charles Cumming had a short career in MI6 himself and this book feels realistic. It has pace created through 80 small chapters with an average of 4 pages per chapter. From the outset it creates open threads and then starts to pull those threads together so that you are carried through to the end.

This is the sixth book by Charles Cumming and the first I had read. His first book A Spy By Nature has already been bought and sits near the top of my 50+ reading list.

Book Review

The book opens with a flashback to 1978. Amelia Weldon, a 20 year old au pair in Tunisia, has been missing for 6 days, she has been having an affair with her employer Jean-Marc Daumal. Back in the present day an elderly French couple are brutally murdered in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Thomas Kell, a 42 year old disgraced ex British Intelligence officer is recovering from a friends birthday celebrations when his mobile rings, ‘We’ve lost the Chief’. Amelia Levene is due to take over as the first female head of MI6 in six weeks, she has disappeared, feared to have been abducted in Paris, Tom is back in the game. Amelia is soon found to have checked into a hotel near Nice and is reportedly on a painting course but Tom tracks her down to a hotel in Carthage, Tunisia where she has met up with Francois Mallot the son of the murdered french couple.

This is an easy to read and gripping thriller that creates a great sense of pace through 80 short chapters, at an average of 5 pages per chapter. Charles Cumming had a short career in MI6 and he brings a realistic sense of a modern spy to this book. It is no surprise that it has won awards and has been voted Best Thriller of the Year by newspapers.