A Divided Spy
A Novel
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4.1 • 170 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In A Divided Spy, a brilliant novel of modern espionage by New York Times bestselling author Charles Cumming, MI6’s Thomas Kell faces off against a handsome and charismatic Russian double agent.
"Astonishingly masterful . . . riveting." —Valerie Plame, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Game
Thomas Kell thought he was done with spying. A former MI6 officer, he devoted his life to the Service, but it has left him with nothing but grief and a simmering anger against the Kremlin.
Then Kell is offered an unexpected chance at revenge. Taking the law into his own hands, he embarks on a mission to recruit a top Russian spy who is in possession of a terrifying secret. As Kell tracks his man from Moscow to London, he finds himself in a high stakes game of cat and mouse in which it becomes increasingly difficult to know who is playing whom.
As the mission reaches boiling point, the threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack looms over Britain. Kell is faced with an impossible choice. Loyalty to MI6—or to his own conscience?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
After a disaster in Istanbul leaves his girlfriend dead, MI6 officer Thomas Kell questions his career choice … until the promise of revenge proves too hard to resist. Author Charles Cumming—once an agent himself—is a worthy successor to John Le Carré, bringing outrageous tension to smoky corridors and clandestine meetings. But A Divided Spy is also firmly grounded in modern political concerns, as Kell’s frantic attempt to stop a terrorist attack by a radicalized Brit leads to the book’s mesmerizing finale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In bestseller Cumming's nuanced, suspenseful third Thomas Kell novel (after 2014's A Colder War), the London-based former MI6 agent, who's been a private citizen for 12 months since the assassination in Istanbul of his girlfriend and fellow spy, Rachel Wallinger, receives a call from Harold Mowbray, a private contractor with whom he has worked on several missions. Mowbray wants to have a face-to-face chat, and they agree to meet at a Middle Eastern restaurant that evening. Over dinner, Mowbray reveals that during a recent vacation with his wife to an Egyptian Red Sea resort he spotted Russian SVR officer Alexander Minasian, whom Kell holds personally responsible for Rachel's death. Kell sets up a trap using Minasian's lover, Bernhard Riedle, and persuades his old boss, SIS chief Amelia Levene, to help him capture Minasian. The hows and whys of the mission slowly unfold in a perfectly constructed plot that proves once again that Cumming is among today's top spy thriller writers. After a complicated, riveting finale, a moving coda suggests that readers may have seen the last of Thomas Kell. Say it ain't so, Charles. 75,000 announced first printing; author tour.
