Charles Cumming
In the summer of 1995, Charles Cumming was approached for recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A year later he moved to Montreal where he began working on a novel based on his experiences. His first book, A Spy By Nature, was published in the UK in 2001. Since then, he has written more than ten spy novels, winning the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger in 2012.
Books by Charles Cumming
“BOX 88 is an Anglo-American intelligence service operating without political oversight, under the radar, made up of various members of the CIA, MI5 and MI6 as well as Special Forces. They do the jobs that government-sanctioned intelligence services can’t or won’t do. In movie terms, it’s a kind of Mission Impossible unit, but they don’t have melting masks or Tom Cruise clinging to the side of a cargo plane as it takes off. I’d always wanted to write a novel set in the 1990s, to examine what MI5 and MI6 were up to in that decade without spy stories…You see the recruitment and the development of a young spy called Lachlan Kite. He’s recruited in 1989, straight out of school, at the age of 18. You see his early operations as fledgling spy through the 1990s. But you also see him in the present day when those operations have come back to haunt him. He’s a man of 50 who has lived in this strange, compelling world for 30 years; you see the person he has become.” Read more...
The Best Post-Soviet Spy Thrillers
Charles Cumming, Novelist
“I love going to these places, eating the food, smelling the air and talking to people on the ground, getting stories and information out of them that inspire a work of fiction. Judas 62 was unusual in that I couldn’t go to Voronezh to research the Russian parts because of the pandemic. I was relying completely on people who had been there or had lived there, or secondary sources, YouTube, Google Maps. But I did go to Dubai two or three times. Unlike most people, I really liked it. It’s a fascinating place. The other major change to spy fiction in the last 30 years—apart from Putin, al Qaeda and ISIS, Snowden and Assange—is technology. Judas 62 tries to show you how the world of spying has changed since the Cold War. In the 1993 section, Kite obviously has no access to mobile phones, to Wi-Fi, to satellites: he’s completely isolated in Russia and has to fend for himself. The Kite of 2020 in Dubai, on the other hand, is under 24-hour surveillance from CCTV and number plate recognition cameras. His phone, his credit cards, his search engine metadata give him away all the time. The mobile phone has totally changed not only intelligence work, but also storytelling.” Read more...
The Best Post-Soviet Spy Thrillers
Charles Cumming, Novelist
“When I was 25 I was approached for a job by MI6. The experience that I had – which was brief but extremely interesting – was crying out to be dramatised. I had always wanted to write a novel, but up to that point I didn’t have a subject, I didn’t have a story. Suddenly I had this thing fall into my lap. The first third of that first book, A Spy By Nature, is more or less an autobiographical account of what happened to me…I wrote A Spy By Nature because I was thinking about what would happen to me if I had done that job. What effect would it have had on my relationships with my girlfriend, with my family, my friends? I would have gone into a parallel life, a pretty complicated and difficult to manage parallel life.” Read more...
Charles Cumming, Novelist
Typhoon
by Charles Cumming
“In Typhoon I was trying to let people know what is going on in terms of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the Uighur Muslim province in Northwest China… The most important thing that I can do is to keep people reading the books that I write – to entertain them and interest them in the characters I have created. Writers shouldn’t be preachy. But if at the same time I can add a layer of political commitment to my books, or whatever you want to call it, then that’s a laudable goal, as far as I’m concerned.” –Charles Cumming on the best books on Espionage.
Interviews with Charles Cumming
The Best Post-Soviet Spy Thrillers, recommended by Charles Cumming
With the end of the Soviet Union, many thought the spy novel was dead. Within a decade, it was back, with old antagonists back in different guises and a new raft of international flashpoints to keep both fictional and real-life spies busy. Here, British spy novelist Charles Cumming, author of more than ten books, recommends five key post-Soviet spy thrillers and explains how the genre has evolved since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The best books on Espionage, recommended by Charles Cumming
Leading British spy writer Charles Cumming found his vocation at 25 after he was approached by MI6. He says that experience, brief but interesting, was crying out to be dramatised
Interviews where books by Charles Cumming were recommended
The best books on Espionage, recommended by Charles Cumming
Leading British spy writer Charles Cumming found his vocation at 25 after he was approached by MI6. He says that experience, brief but interesting, was crying out to be dramatised
The Best Post-Soviet Spy Thrillers, recommended by Charles Cumming
With the end of the Soviet Union, many thought the spy novel was dead. Within a decade, it was back, with old antagonists back in different guises and a new raft of international flashpoints to keep both fictional and real-life spies busy. Here, British spy novelist Charles Cumming, author of more than ten books, recommends five key post-Soviet spy thrillers and explains how the genre has evolved since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Best Spy Thrillers of 2023, recommended by Shane Whaley
2023 was a fabulous year for spy thrillers, with some fans saying there hasn’t been a year like it since the 1970s, says Shane Whaley, host of the Spybrary podcast. He picks out five of his favourites from the year, all works of fiction that nonetheless give a sense of what it’s like to work as a spy.
