Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming

Published by Mysterious Press on November 7, 2023

Kennedy 35 is the third installment in Charles Cumming’s BOX 88 series of espionage novels. The protagonist, Lachlan Kite, is now the head of BOX 88, an off-the-books, ultra-secret organization that brings together agents from American and British intelligence agencies.

Kite is married but separated from his wife. He begins the novel in Sweden, where his wife is a physician who recently gave birth to his daughter. He hopes to spend several weeks with his family, perhaps repairing his relationship with his wife, but his plans change when he gets a message from Eric Appiah, a friend from Senegal who went to school with Kite. Appiah does some freelance work for BOX 88. If me wants to meet with Kite, the meeting must be important.

Having learned a lesson about trying to maintain a relationship while concealing the nature of his work, Kite tells his wife as much as he can about Appiah. His story takes him back to 1995. Kite was sent to Senegal with his girlfriend, Martha Raines, who was there to complete his cover as a backpacking tourist. He was to play a collateral role in a plan to kidnap Augustin Bagaza, a Rwandan Hutu who shared responsibility for the genocide of the Tutsi people. Bagaza is in Senegal with his Congolese Hutu girlfriend, Grace Mavinga, a woman who delighted in murdering the Tutsi. France was complicit in the genocide and may have an interest in protecting Bagaza to safeguard its shaky international reputation.

About half of Kennedy 35 follows Kite’s mission as he travels through dangerous cities, maintaining surveillance of Bagaza in anticipation that BOX 88 operatives will snatch him before he and Mavinga can flee the country. Kite’s role in the mission becomes more dangerous when Philippe Vauban, a French journalist with PTSD whose Tutsi girlfriend was murdered by Bagaza, suffers a psychotic episode and decides to embark on a mission of revenge.

Cumming crafts tense scenes as Kite moves from boring afternoons in a small Senagalese resort to the adrenalin rush of surveillance and tradecraft in the space of a few days. The story from 1995 ends with a shootout and Mavinga’s flight from the country.

The rest of the novel takes place in 2022, beginning with Kite’s contact with Appiah. An American writer/podcaster, Lucian Cablean, has tumbled to the story of Bagaza’s disappearance in 1995 and has heard rumors about Kite’s secret organization. To protect BOX 88, Kite meets with Cablean, learns of a friend’s death, discovers that Cablean has also been targeted, and tracks down Martha Raines and Mavinga. The second half of the novel is interesting but less compelling than the story set in Senegal.

The 1995 story works because Cumming has mastered the creation of atmosphere. The smells, sounds, and tastes of Dakar become part of the story, complete with potholes and noisy motorbikes and unreliable taxis, dance clubs populated by wealthy men and beautiful young hookers. Cumming also captures the pain of a genocide that American media barely reported. Some genocides are important to Americans and others involve victims who don’t have white skin.

While the novel’s second half features less action, Cumming does imagine a clever plan to protect the secrecy of BOX 88. While the novel is self-contained, the ending might be described as a cliffhanger, as it ends with Kite taking a disturbing telephone call that seems likely to upend his life. I didn’t need that incentive to look forward to Cumming’s next novel, as he has firmly established himself as one of the better spy novelists currently working in the genre.

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