JUDAS 62: The gripping new spy action thriller featuring BOX 88 from the master of the 21st century spy novel (BOX 88, Book 2)

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A former British Secret Service recruit, he is a contributing editor of The Week magazine and lives in London.

The latter part follows a protracted follow-up job in the present day, set in UAE, but it’s all rather dull and over-explained. The second book in Charles Cumming's gripping new thriller series surrounding BOX 88 - a covert intelligence organization that operates beneath the radar. Moves along at good pace, characters are developed and seems believable given current state of world politics. Then we switch to the modern day and his old mission becomes relevant again, and Kite and his team may have to sacrifice everything to resolve issues from the past.His second novel, The Hidden Man (2003), tells the story of two brothers investigating the murder of their father, a former SIS officer, at the hands of the Russian mafia. In fact, in this episode Lachlan heads up the British end and discovers to his horror that he’s on a list of people the Russians are planning to assassinate. Cumming maintains both pace and suspense well throughout and the only real grumble I have – and it’s a personal thing – is that I find any book with so many active participants (there’s an index listing more than thirty at the beginning of the book) to be hard work in tracking who is who as the tale plays out. The first Kite novel was excellent, but this is even better ― an elegant exposition of what being a spy in the field actually feels like and the fear it can instil in even the most hardened operator. A bunch of additional characters introduced, and not enough time to get to know - or care - about them.

They succeed, but the escape is a harrowing one and on their tail the entire time is a brutal and very suspicious member of the KGB/FSK by the name of Gromik. The mission largely goes off without a hitch, with the only complications arising from the avoidable social and relationship drama Kite stupidly gets himself embroiled in. We all know about how, in real life, Putin has sent agents to attack his perceived enemies with nerve agents and radioactive materials. S., assassinated by Putin's FSB (ex-KGB) agents as a traitor, one of many targets on their Judas List.In particular, the author highlights the plight of the Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang, a semi-autonomous region of The People's Republic of China. The Spanish Game was described by The Times as one of the six finest spy novels of all time, alongside Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Funeral in Berlin and The Scarlet Pimpernel.

The second Box 88 novel concerns Lachlan Kite's second job for the organisation, back in 1993 when he was a student, given the task of extracting a Russian scientist who wants to defect, and then later during the pandemic, when the Russians have put not only the defector on an assassination list, but also the alias that Kite was going under back in the 90s. The story spans the decade from the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997 to present-day Shanghai.

I found that the story of Kite’s visit to and escape from Russia had echoes of Ben Macintyre’s true life book The Spy and the Traitor and in this respect, though the methods were somewhat different, it rang true and therefore had all the more impact. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added. Is their inside man into Russia trustworthy enough to help them accomplish such a tall task in a foreign country without being exposed? Cumming has become an expert in immediately placing the reader in the heart of the often unbearably suspenseful espionage activity featuring Box 88’s favorite spy Lachlan Kite.

For Kite to think back to the man he had been in the summer of 1993 was to remember a different person: richer in feelings, hungry for experience and obsessed by the possibilities and complications of sex. The fact that Putin's Russian thugs continue to feel free to murder people in the UK, safe in the knowledge that there will be no effective deterrence, makes the plot of this book more relevant than the average thriller. It seems to me that there may be an interesting novel buried in here somewhere but Cumming needs a much stronger editor to tell him to cut out most of the irrelevant waffling and endless repetition.The second book in the Box88 series takes the reader to Russia in 1993, where young Lockie Kite's task is to extract a chemical weapons specialist. Kite's fight for survival takes him to Dubai, a city crawling with international intelligence officers, where he enters into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the Russian secret state. Throw in some Novichok, mysterious beautiful women who are attracted to our hero like magnets, and lots and lots of Ladas, and it all feels stale and unoriginal. The mission was also extremely dangerous as Kite knew if his cover was blown he would be ‘burnt’ by Box 88 and have to face Russian prison on his own.