A Spy by Nature / The Spanish Game

Alec Milius #1-2

by Charles Cumming

A Spy by Nature

Alec Milius is young, smart, ambitious and comfortable with deceit. So when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, Alec thinks he’s landed the perfect job for his talents. But working alone, relying on instinct, he’s soon spinning a web of deception that has him caught between his new masters and powerful opponents. For in his new line of work the difference between the truth and a lie can be the difference between life and death. And Alec is having trouble telling them apart …

The Spanish Game

Alec Milius quit the spying game six years ago – or so he thought.

Living in exile in Madrid, he is lured back into a brutal world of lies and deception by the mysterious disappearance of a prominent politician. Forced to work alone, without the support of his former masters in London, Alec comes face to face with the nightmare of modern terror. And this time there's no-one to call for help…

Genres: Fiction

860 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 3, 2011

About the author

Charles Cumming is British writer of spy fiction. His international bestselling thrillers including A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game, Typhoon and The Trinity Six. A former British Secret Service recruit, he is a contributing editor of The Week magazine and lives in London.

http://www.charlescumming.co.uk/

Reviews

[Tracy]

As much as I love spy thrillers, these two didn't cut it. The protagonist was a whiny idiot in the first book, but I plowed on into the second in hopes that he'd grown up and stopped whining. Nope. Still an idiot. And while dislike of a hero isn't enough to make me choose, "It was OK," the background on political figures and movements pushed me over the edge. Boring (for me). I found myself skipping pages of material because I just couldn't be bothered to care. And as it turns out, it really didn't matter. Alec was still an idiot and a terrible spy and I still don't like him. I did like "being" in Madrid in the second book, though. All this aside, I'm going to read Cumming's novel about the Cambridge Five, or Six, as he suggests.

[David Gee]

Alec Milius flunks the training for MI6 but MI5 offer him a probationary assignment: he is to join a “sting” operation with an oil exploration company in the City of London, whose contracts in Kazakhstan a US rival is trying to poach. Alec must befriend an American husband-and-wife team and feed them false intelligence.

In this early novel (2001) I detect the influence of Robert Ludlum. Charles Cummings writes everyday prose and uses extended dialogue scenes to shade his characters and build up the tension. I wish he didn’t write in the present tense, but A Spy By Nature is an impressive debut. Industrial espionage (by our closest ally) doesn’t sound as murky as penetrating terrorist cells, but in fact it is. The ending is as bleak as a Le Carrè.

The author’s biographic introduction tells us that as a post-grad he was approached by MI6. I hope it really is true that their recruitment briefing includes the statement: “Officers are certainly not licensed to kill.”

[Rob Wilkinson]

As someone who's spent several weeks in the Basque Country as a tourist, I enjoyed this perspective of what might lie underneath. For the spy Alec Milius the ability to switch perspective quickly seems key to survival because nothing is what it seems. His life is full of questionable allegiances. Who's working for whom? Unlike Alec, the reader can pause to ponder the possibilities. The Spanish Game makes me want to understand more deeply the history of the Basque separatist movement and the attempts of the Government of Spain to forge a peace. Many thanks to Cumming for writing this novel.

[Kevin]

This was ok as a quick summer holiday read. It has a few great plot twists especially when read as the sequel of "A Spy by Nature". However, it lacks real depth.

[Caroline Thorley]

This is the wrong version of the book - I found the right one but was unable just to delete this one.