A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 14, 2017

A Divided Spy is the final book in the Thomas Kell trilogy. It builds on the death of Kell’s girlfriend, Rachel Wallinger, and makes occasional reference other to key events in the earlier novels, but it can easily be read as a standalone. However, the reader will likely appreciate the depth of the characters more fully with the benefit of insights provided by the first two novels.

At 46, Thomas Kell has left behind his dangerous days as a spy. Since Rachel’s murder in Istanbul, Kell has gone out of his way to avoid former colleagues at MI6. Kell would like to seek vengeance against Alexander Minasian, the man he holds responsible for Rachel’s assassination, but he has almost resigned himself to injustice. Or at least, he is resigned to it until he learns that Minasian has been spotted at a resort in Egypt.

Kell’s first step is to befriend Bernhard Riedle in Brussels. Riedle is Minasian’s jilted lover. Perhaps Kell can use Riedle to set up Minasian … but who is setting up whom? As is common in spy novels, trust is easily misplaced, leaving the reader to puzzle out the intrigue.

The other plot development involves Shahid Khan, who is returning to England (his birthplace and a land he now views as evil) to carry out a mission. Kell learns, indirectly and incompletely, that a terrorist plot against London might be afoot, and that soon becomes the focus of Kell’s investigation — to the limited extent that his boss, who doubts the authenticity of Kell’s source, will allow him to do anything at all. Of course, the spy who ignores his boss in order to do what he believes to be right is a time-honored theme of spy fiction, and Kell fits within that mold.

Modern spy novels often feature ISIS terrorists while Cold War spy novels reliably focused on Russians. It’s unusual to find a novel that includes both, but Charles Cumming manages to merge them deftly.

Much of the tension in A Divided Spy comes from uncertainty as to whether Kell is being played and, if so, by whom. The battle of wits between Kell and Minasian never quite enters Le Carré territory, but it is both convincing and engaging. The novel’s strength, in fact, is its portrayal of two spies who, while separated by ideology, are fundamentally similar people — a theme Le Carré executed to perfection and that Cumming handles with aplomb.

Cumming’s exploration of the mentality of a spy is really an exploration of anyone who deceives. Telling a constant stream of lies, whether for personal gain or to advance a government’s interests, changes a person’s nature, prevents him from being true to himself. People who care about the truth (people who are not sociopaths) may be destroyed by living a lie, and that is seen to different degrees in both of the novel’s central characters.

At the same time, living with ambiguity, never knowing whether a source (or even a colleague) can be trusted, makes it hard to maintain a moral center. Trust can get you killed; an inability to trust can do the same. The moral conflicts that characterize the best spy fiction are particularly strong in the concluding chapters of A Divided Spy. The novel is a fine end to a series that, taken as a whole, is probably Cumming’s best work.

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The Secret Trilogy by John Gardner

Published digitally by Endeavour Press on October 6, 2016

The three volumes in this trilogy — The Secret Generations, The Secret Houses, and The Secret Families — chronicle the devious machinations of the Railton family in the twentieth century world of espionage. In the first novel, Charles Railton becomes one of the first members of MI5 (then known as MO5). His Uncle Giles is what would now be called an intelligence analyst. Giles pimps out his daughter to spy on a German military officer and pimps out his son’s wife to spy on the Irish. Giles’ nephew John serves in Parliament and is appointed to the Cabinet so that he can bolster Giles’ work. John’s son James wants to be an aviator in the belief that these new-fangled flying machines might have some military reconnaissance value -- a plan that Giles fully supports.

While the first novel addresses the intrigue of World War I, the second novel moves to the Second World War. The Railtons are supporting the French resistance — Caspar Railton is running his own network — again using family members as undercover agents. The Railtons are working alongside, and intermingling with, the American Farthing family, which is perhaps even more devious than the Railtons. A traitor threatens the organization — but could the traitor possibly be a Railton? It’s up to Caspar’s nephew Naldo to figure it all out.

The third novel pits the Railtons against the Russians, this time asking whether Caspar Railton has actually been working as a Russian double agent for decades. Naldo investigates the rumor with the help of a Farthing, who has some family loyalty issues of his own. The final novel brings the series, and perhaps the Railton family’s usefulness to British intelligence, to a close.

Taken collectively, the three volumes offer an excellent history lesson and a wealth of realistic detail about the evolution of twentieth century espionage. The story is also a multigenerational family saga involving two families that intermarry (families that spy together, stay together). There are times when John Gardner’s prose is a bit too dry for my liking, and I think the espionage works better than the family drama, but the plotting is quite good and characters are strong. The Secret Trilogy showcases Gardner as a serious espionage writer, something his James Bond novels (as the most prolific successor to Ian Fleming) failed to do.

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A Killing in Moscow by Clive Egleton

This is a repost of a review posted on Tzer Island in 2010. The book was first published in 1994. It has been out of print for some time, but has been published digitally by Endeavour Press as of September 8, 2016.

Clive Egleton's second Peter Ashton novel (first published in 1994) is better than his first (Hostile Intent). Ashton is given a stronger personality (the polite British version of abrasive) and he begins to have a life outside the office. The plot is less far-fetched and more interesting than the story in Hostile Intent in that A Killing in Moscow explores the relationship between the KGB and organized crime in post-Soviet Russia, arguing (through Ashton) that it doesn't matter whether the people on the other side are motivated by politics or greed if their actions jeopardize national security.

The novel begins with the execution of British businessman Colin Joyner and the prostitute he was entertaining in his Moscow hotel room. Peter Ashton, not quite trusted or simply disliked by those in power at SIS as a result of his actions in Hostile Intent, has been assigned to run Security and Technical Services where his access to top secret information is limited. Ashton, in Moscow to conduct a security audit, is sent by the British Embassy to assist the local police in the investigation of Joyner's death. This straight-forward task becomes more complicated when Ashton learns that a Russian woman employed as an Embassy secretary has been spying on the British Embassy official who monitors commercial transactions, and has been passing information to the prostitute who was found dead in Joyner's room. The novel follows Ashton as he puzzles out the relationship between the spy and Joyner. As in Hostile Intent, Ashton makes it his responsibility to keep the spy alive, creating the opportunity for some fast moving action scenes.

The pace in A Killing in Moscow is intense and Egleton's prose is more fluid than it was in Hostile Intent. The combination of intellectual intrigue and well written action scenes makes this a fun reading experience, and the ending is just wild.

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In the Name of the Queen by John MacRae

Published by Endeavour Press on June 27, 2016

In the Name of the Queen has a 2016 copyright, although it appears to have been first published in Great Britain in 2012. In any event, unlike some of the novels that Endeavour Press has resurrected, this one is of fairly recent vintage.

Mike Farrah is in military intelligence. His father is Lebanese and he speaks Arabic fluently. He is recruited by MI6 to impersonate a Jordanian billionaire, the son of a man who has long been dead.

The mission requires Farrah to seduce a Saudi woman whose father is a banker. In fact, he is suspected of being al Qaeda’s banker. Farrah’s minders hope he can help them locate the banker so that he can be snatched by the CIA, which does the dirty work for MI6.

After a good bit of training (including instruction in the art of seduction), Farrah goes to Cairo where he assumes his undercover identity. The beautiful woman is also living in Cairo because she cannot tolerate the intolerance of Saudi Arabia, and is particularly unwilling to be treated as inferior because of her gender. The woman’s brother, on the other hand, has more extreme views and considers everyone in Cairo -- particularly Farrah -- to be decadent and unworthy of his sister’s attention. That, of course, leads to a clash between Farrah and the brother.

Some aspects of In the Name of the Queen are predictable, but the novel also takes a couple of unexpected twists. Farrah learns that he cannot trust anyone -- particularly Mossad, a devious agency that is as dangerous as the enemy he is trying to battle. All good espionage novels are about betrayal, and the question in this one is whether Farrah will betray the beautiful woman and her father before he is betrayed by the people who are supposedly on his side.

Sex scenes tend to be cheesy (“quivering manhood”) and awkward (“exploded in a hot explosion”) as John MacRae proves himself to be one of those British authors to whom the prose of sex does not come naturally. I’m not quite sure I understood Farrah’s motivation for certain actions he takes as the story reaches its climax, and I was unhappy with a couple of unanswered questions that dangle at the novel’s end.

On the other hand, the story is good, the pace is steady, and action scenes are both credible and exciting. The plot does not overreach, which sets In the Name of the Queen apart from most modern thrillers. Characters have a reasonable amount of depth. In the Name of the Queen isn’t in the top tier of spy fiction, but fans of the genre should enjoy it.

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An Honorable Man by Paul Vidich

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on April 12, 2016

An Honorable Man is set in 1953, against a backdrop of the Cold War and the McCarthy hearings. One of the characters is loosely based on James Speyer Kronthal, a CIA agent who was blackmailed by the NKVD. He submitted to the blackmail, and thus became a traitor, rather than risking the exposure of his homosexuality. Kronthal committed suicide before he had to answer McCarthy’s questions, which would have focused on his sexual history rather than his (still unknown) betrayal of the CIA.

In the novel, George Mueller works for the CIA. He is disgruntled and everyone knows it, so he is perfect bait. The agency dangles him before Vasilenko, a Russian agent who wants to recruit him. Mueller, of course, is playing the same game, hoping to get information from Vasilenko about a Soviet mole in the CIA known as Protocol.

When a Russian embassy driver runs him off the road as he’s bicycling, Mueller doesn’t know if he was the victim of an accident or an attempted homicide. However, the accident gives him a chance to meet Beth, who picks him up and tends his wounds. Beth is Roger Altman’s sister. Their father, a former IMF secretary, is caught up in the communist witch-hunt. Roger Altman recruited Mueller to the CIA. Small world, isn’t it?

That set-up introduces a plot that is a staple of spy fiction. The reader (like the main character) is challenged to find the mole. But that really isn’t a challenge since the book must conform, at least in a general sense, to history. The story therefore moves toward a destination that the reader can easily foresee.

The characters lack complexity, which makes me chuckle as I take note of the blurbs that compare Paul Vidich to John Le Carré. Still, a novel shouldn’t be judged by how well it lives up to its blurbs, nor should a fledgling novelist be compared to a master. Taken on its own merit, An Honorable Man manages to generate a reasonable amount of dramatic tension.

The novel is relatively short, sacrificing an intricacy of plot for bare-bones storytelling. Paul Vidich’s depiction of the Cold War atmosphere is a key to the novel’s success. Vidich’s prose is above-average and is peppered with literary references. Given the limits imposed by the novel’s length, Vidich also does a better than average job of exploring the implications of espionage, the tendency to treat it as a game without considering the morality of using human game pieces that die (or worse) when they are sacrificed or captured. There is a reasonable amount of meat in this slender novel. It works better as a novel of psychological suspense than as a spy novel, but however a reader might classify it, the novel contributes something to the espionage genre, if only as a window that allows the reader to glimpse a true story.

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