By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
The Cold War may be over, but lingering secrets about spies, traitors and government coverups fire the pages in Charles Cumming's intelligent and briskly paced The Trinity Six.
This is the book cover of Charles Cumming's Cold War novel, The Trinity Six.
This is the book cover of Charles Cumming's Cold War novel, The Trinity Six.
If you haven't read this British author, here's the scoop. Critics have been unabashed in their praise of his novels, including last's year's brilliantly concocted Typhoon . The action took place in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the late '90s just before Hong Kong was turned over to Chinese rule.
The Trinity Six is Cumming's fourth novel and comparisons to John le Carre and Len Deighton continue to gild his reputation as a premiere writer of espionage thrillers.
In this new novel, Cumming riffs on Britain's biggest real-life spy scandal and its most notorious double agent, Kim Philby. Philby ran the infamous Cambridge Five spy ring that passed Cold War intelligence to the Soviets beginning in the 1930s. His betrayals went unknown for decades even as he rose to the top position in British counterintelligence. Eventually, he defected to the U.S.S.R where he died in 1988.
What if there had been a sixth member of this spy ring? What if his existence were known by the British government? And what would the government do to anyone who tried to make this embarrassing knowledge public?
Those questions play out in this novel when Sam Gaddis, a London academic, begins research on a book about the Cold War. His online quest for information triggers an alert at MI6. Bad luck for Gaddis who's pulled into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with British and Russian agents.
Tales of unassuming civilians dragged into political intrigue where bodies fall like dominoes are nothing new. But Cumming is a wonderful storyteller who makes you care about Gaddis' fate. You'll feel a part of Gaddis' run for his life in the U.K. and across the European continent. It's like we're dodging government agents with him. Like Gaddis, you'll never feel so alone.
The Trinity Six
By Charles Cumming St. Martin?s, 354 pp., $24.99Country hopping and border crossings are a classic espionage novel device, but Cumming makes it all feel fresh.
That includes a darkly atmospheric scene in Vienna's Prater Park, made famous in Graham Greene's master novel The Third Man and the iconic 1949 noir film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.
The Cold War is over, but in The Trinity Six it's hotter than ever.
Chandra West AnnaLynne McCord Nicole Richie Anne Marie Kortright Michelle Rodriguez
