Spy Novelists Well Worth Shadowing

(Editor’s note: Northern California resident Peter Handel has reviewed and written about crime fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Portland Oregonian, Pages Magazine, Mystery Readers International, and CrimeReads. In the essay below, he recommends three increasingly prominent spy novelists whose work is guaranteed to please even the most jaded espionage-fiction fan.)

John le Carré may be gone, but three writers in particular stand out as his descendants in the spy novel realm: Olen Steinhauer, Charles Cumming and Paul Vidich. Both Steinhauer and Cumming have been at it since early in the 21st century, while Vidich published his first book, An Honorable Man, in 2016.

All three write utterly compelling and smart stories that, like those from le Carré and Graham Greene, take readers into murky territory, where betrayal is common, sex can be dangerous, and violence is always lurking.

Steinhauer was kind enough to answer my questions about his literary efforts, back when I was writing a crime-fiction column for the late—very late—Pages Magazine in 2004. At the time, he was in the middle of creating his five-book series, the Yalta Boulevard Sequence, which began with 2003’s The Bridge of Sighs and concluded with 2007’s Victory Square.

“Essentially,” said Steinhauer, “the idea has always been a series of crime stories in a fictional Eastern European country, one for each decade of the Cold War … to me, this series is a personal and literary experiment to find out what I can pull off within the confines I’ve set for myself.” Obviously, he made it happen; the novels can be read either in order or as standalones.

Then, Steinhauer notes on his Web site: “After finishing the Yalta Boulevard Sequence of Cold War novels, I made a conscious decision to move into the contemporary world. This may seem like an obvious thing to do, but I'd spent my entire professional career writing about a time and place rather distant, and so the idea of moving to ‘today’ was a bit disconcerting. However, it was also necessary, for I was starting to fear I was escaping the confusing present to hide out in the past. So, I jumped feet-first into the post 9/11 world with the CIA's Department of Tourism, and Milo Weaver, a spy who just happened to be my first American main character.” Milo is an antihero, and a “Tourist” is basically a serial killer—just one we happen to like. (Unlike how totally repellant actual serial killers really are—Long Island, I’m talking to you.)

The four Milo Weaver novels truly pick up steam as the series proceeds. While The Tourist (2009) is your basic page-turner, the second and third entries, The Nearest Exit (2010) and An American Spy (2012), respectively, are even better. (I have been sitting on the finale, 2020’s The Last Tourist—one of those books you are dying to read, yet don’t want the “good times” to end!)

Steinhauer also has several standalones, including The Cairo Affair, a straight-ahead espionage thriller set in 2011, and an unusual political parable, 2018’s The Middleman, which considers radical, lefty political activism and a female FBI agent’s efforts to unwind a mysterious movement called The Massive Brigade. No word yet on his next novel, but it’s bound to be as killer as all the rest.

The prolific British novelist Charles Cumming also writes both series and standalones. He began in 2001 with A Spy by Nature, seemingly drawing from his own real-life experience. As his Web sites explains: “In 1995, Charles was approached for recruitment by the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A Spy by Nature, a novel partly based on his experiences with MI6, was published in the UK in June 2001. The novel’s hero, Alec Milius, is a flawed loner in his early 20s who is recruited by MI5 to sell doctored research data on oil exploration in the Caspian Sea to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).” He rather blows the whole thing. It’s a chastened, hapless Alec we encounter in the sequel, 2006’s The Spanish Game, wherein he gets wrapped up in Basque separatist intrigue.

But back up now to Cumming’s second novel, The Hidden Man (2003). It’s a standalone that follows two argumentative brothers who investigate the murder of their ex-spy father at the hands of Russian bad guys. It does feel at times like the proverbial second novel, but all the same makes for an engaging read.

It was with Cumming’s fourth book, Typhoon (2008), that he began to evolve into the truly remarkable stylist and plotter we know him to be today. So far unread by yours truly (but sitting prominently in my Cumming bedside stack), the story in Typhoon takes place in Hong Kong, as MI6 and CIA agents mix it up.

The Trinity Six, released back in 2011, is Cumming’s take on the biggest spy scandal in Britain’s history: the Cold War moles who were embedded in British intelligence—the infamous “Cambridge spy ring”—and in the pay of the Soviet Union.

But wait, there’s more, much more! Cumming’s Thomas Kell trilogy debuted back in 2012, beginning with A Foreign Country, which revolves around an MI6 officer given a last chance to redeem himself when the first woman head of MI6 disappears. Can Kell sort it all out? Of course he can. It’s thrilling writing and reading. A Colder War (2014) and A Divided Spy (2016) complete that triumvirate.

Another Cumming standalone, 2019’s The Man Between (aka The Moroccan Girl), precedes the utterly smashing soon-to-be-trilogy, the BOX 88 novels. Those latter three books, beginning with BOX 88 (2020), are based on a highly secret sub-organization involved in counterintelligence unknown to most members of both the CIA and MI6. BOX 88 follows the evolution of Lachlan Kite (“Lockie”), recruited as an 18-year-old, initially to gather information about a rich Iranian who may have been involved in the Lockerbie plane explosion over Scotland in 1988. Your intrepid correspondent here is almost finished with that first entry, and I’m chomping at the bit to read its follow up, JUDAS 62 (2021). I very much look forward to finding the third book, Kennedy 35, due out in November from The Mysterious Press.

If you wish to acquaint yourself with Cumming’s work, and you really should, then I recommend starting with BOX 88—it’s a tough call, but somebody has to make it.

The last of this new breed of spy novelists, and one who has wonderfully monopolized my time, is Paul Vidich. He’s published five novels to date, and his deeply researched stories have more than a little dose of reality-based action. His frequent, primary protagonist, George Mueller, is a typical world-weary CIA op. In Vidich’s debut, An Honorable Man, Mueller is tasked with exposing a Soviet mole in the Agency during the early 1950s. (Lots of moles out there …)

A year after The Honorable Man reached bookstores, Mueller was back in The Good Assassin, traveling to pre-Castro, revolutionary Cuba to determine if a CIA agent stationed there—an old friend—has gone rogue. It’s a terrific use of what has been an overlooked setting in recent years.

Mueller is a very peripheral presence in The Coldest Warrior (2020), another fact-based story about the mysterious death of a government scientist who was exploited in the CIA’s infamous experiments with a new drug: LSD. (The things that CIA got up to!) Here is a thriller that begins in the early ’50s and concludes more than 20 years later.

2021’s The Mercenary, set in Moscow, circa 1985, pits a grizzled, troubled ex-CIA agent named Alex Garin against the KGB—for which he once worked as an agent, until he defected to the United States. In this tale, Garin is apparently the only person who is trusted by a high-level Russian intelligence agent wanting to make his own defection.

On to Berlin, 1989—shortly before that city’s Soviet-era Wall came down—and The Matchmaker (2022). It introduces Vidich’s first female protagonist, American translator Anne Simpson—happily married, she believes, to a loving East German man, a “piano tuner” by trade, who disappears suddenly and whose body is soon discovered. So he’s seemingly … dead. It’s up to Anne to find out what the truth is and to maneuver her way through duplicitous Stasi and CIA agents. Vidich again takes real-life events/people and fictionalizes the story around them. And the ending is a genuine stunner.

This fall, Vidich, like Cumming, has a new book due in stores: Beirut Station (Pegasus Crime), set in Lebanon in 2006.

Any reader who wants to escape into the labyrinthine world of espionage will find no better guides than these three gifted offspring of le Carré.

READ MORE: “How Paul Vidich Builds His World of Spies,” by Peter Handel (CrimeReads).

Cumming Rides a Strong Wind

For London-based fans of espionage fiction, it’s been an exciting last few weeks. First, of course, we had all that media ballyhoo about the launch of Sebastian Faulks’ new James Bond novel, Devil May Care, which was released on the 100th anniversary of Bond creator Ian Fleming’s birth. And then, on top of that came the figurative passing of John le Carré’s torch to a younger entrant in the spy-fiction field, Charles Cumming, author of the blistering new Typhoon.

I first encountered Cumming last summer in New York City, during ThrillerFest. He was a guest at the St. Martin’s Press party, since that U.S. publisher was just then introducing his work to American audiences. Since that time, though, I seem to be bumping into Cumming with some frequency. Not long ago, we faced off over a chess board (to our mutual enjoyment, even though I must grudgingly admit he’s a better play than me). And then earlier this month, we both showed up at CrimeFest in Bristol. I was pleased to learn during the latter get-together that his editor at St. Martin’s is the legendary Keith Kahla, who also works with Joe Finder and Gayle Lynds.

Just recently I attended the launch party for Typhoon, which was held at independent Daunt Books just off Holland Park in North-West London. (If you ever find yourself in that area of the British capital, by the way, don’t miss dropping by this quintessential Edwardian bookshop staffed by knowledgeable bibliophiles. It’s a real treat.) Pleased to accept Cumming’s invitation, I drove in to London on the appointed day, checked in at a hotel near the bookstore, and after meeting up with my colleagues Mike Stotter and Ayo Onatade, headed off to the party.

As the three of us entered Daunt Books, we were taken slightly aback by the remarkable turnout of guests. Among the celebrating throng were heavyweight critic and author Barry Forshaw and his wife, Judith, along with Cumming’s British editor, Rowland White. I chatted for a while with White, partly about the success of his own runaway bestseller, Vulcan 607, but mostly about Faulks’ new Bond novel. Before long, we were joined by Cumming, who had only just reviewed Devil May Care for The Spectator--not altogether positively:

What Devil May Care lacks is a sprinkling of magic. There has probably never been a more erratic writer than Ian Fleming. On a bad day, he was very, very bad, but on top form he was capable of matching such giants of the literary thriller as Eric Ambler and Graham Greene. Nothing in Devil May Care, for example, comes close to Fleming’s description of Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love, with her ‘wet trap of a mouth, that went on opening and shutting as if it was operated by wires under the chin’. Casino Royale, in particular, contains many passages of what Faulks might deign to call ‘complex symphonic music’, but he has proved incapable of repeating them.

Nevertheless, Ian Fleming Publications will be delighted that the centrepiece of the centenary year has been met with such widespread critical and commercial acclaim. Launched on the back of a global publicity campaign only fractionally less expensive than the cost of sending Sir Hugo Drax to the moon, Devil May Care could hardly have failed. In fact, in recent weeks I have begun to feel rather sorry for the many writers whose books have been left floundering in the wake of the Faulks juggernaut.

As Cumming was called off to greet more guests, I had a chance to speak with the author’s father, who turned out be delightful chap and was (not surprisingly) overjoyed with his son’s success as an espionage novelist.

Then Cumming was asked to address the assemblage. He gave a very passionate, moving, and witty speech, which was basically a thank-you to the many people who had helped him--not all of whom he had time to name (though they’re acknowledged in Typhoon). In an aside that made Stotter, Forshaw, and I blush, he also credited the support he’s received from The Rap Sheet, Crime Time, and Shots. Red faces were then shared around the room as he remarked with charming modesty on the generous critical reaction Typhoon has won from critics, especially from his fellow novelist William Boyd (Restless). Cumming went on to note how topical Typhoon has turned out to be, what with all the political unrest in China, leading up to this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing--a subject he previously addressed in The Guardian.

After Cumming had finished speaking and the applause had died down, I noticed a few strange people lurking in the back of the bookstore. They weren’t obviously journalists, reviewers, or Cumming’s friends and family. There was something about the manner in which their eyes swayed over the attendees that alerted me to their presence. I was particularly aware of their taking stock of anyone who looked Middle Eastern or Asian. As I seemed to be the only person in that room who fitted both those categories, they were watching me carefully. Typhoon, if you’re familiar with its plot, is a book bound to court controversy. And I assume that these folks were from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (aka MI6), keeping a low profile but showing up just to be sure there were no “problems.” I smiled at one of the SIS people, and she gave me a small smile back before alerting one of her male colleagues, who’d been surreptitiously browsing the Erotica section near the front of the store. They realized then that they’d been identified. Presently, they checked on their watches and decided to leave Daunt’s, passing close enough by me to give me a chill. Remember, under recently approved anti-terror laws a person in Britain can be detained for up to 42 days without a charge being levied against him or her, and without the suspects being allowed access to a lawyer. George Orwell would have recognized this as the beginning of a slippery slope.

Following that brush with the SIS, Stotter, Onatade, and I joined the others for this book launch’s celebratory dinner, which was heavily biased toward the alcoholic in my case. (Nothing like a little real-life espionage to put one on edge.) Then, after saying my good-byes to my friends and hosts, I staggered back to my hotel, keeping watch behind me the whole while. I didn’t spot any followers on the walk back along Holland Park, but Harry Lime’s theme from The Third Man did keep spooling through my brain.

It wasn’t long after that party, that I rang up Charles Cumming to congratulate him on the wonderful review he’d received from The Times’ Peter Millar. In his write-up, Millar compared Typhoon favorably with John le Carré’s oeuvre:

Not since The Honourable Schoolboy has there been a satisfactory spy novel about Britain’s relations with China: the global power of the 19th century tussling with that of the 21st, all the time complicated by that still bolshie 20th-century giant, America.

The obvious fulcrum is Hong Kong. In John le Carré’s book--perhaps the most underrated of all his prodigious output--the ogre offstage is the Soviet Union, but it is the one-sided “special relationship” that provides the sweet-and-sour flavour. ...

[Cumming’s novel] is narrated by a third party bit-player, ostensibly a journalist on the SIS payroll, with the full benefit of hindsight, which gives it a further le Carré-esque touch: that all-knowing, mildly wistful feeling of an inquest.

The comparison is a heavy one for a young author, but Typhoon, with its deep plotting, flawed characters, climactic conclusion and undercurrent of mistrust is another step in the footprints of the master.

Reviews don’t come much more enthusiastic than that one.

If you haven’t read Cumming’s work yet, it’s definitely time to pick up one of his still few novels. Click here to learn more about the author’s covert world, and here to read Mike Stotter’s review of Typhoon, which I’m convinced will be remembered as a classic work of espionage fiction. Oh, and should you wish to see a photo montage of the Typhoon launch party, simply click here. Can you spot the SIS agents for yourself?

* * *

By the way, Penguin Books UK and Charles Cumming have organized an exclusive competition for Rap Sheet readers. The first-prize winner will receive a signed copy of the hardcover of Typhoon, while the runner-up will be sent a signed copy of the paperback version of Cumming’s 2006 novel, The Spanish Game. All you have to do to enter is answer this question:

In the opening of Typhoon a professor from China crosses the border into Hong Kong. Can you name the professor?

(If you need a clue, Chapter One of Cumming’s brand-new novel can be found here.)

Simply e-mail your answer (plus your name and mailing address) to jpwrites@sprynet.com by midnight on Friday, June 27. And in the subject line, type “Cumming Contest.” We’ll pick two names out of a hat and alert the winners.

This contest is open to all readers, not just those in the UK.

What are you waiting for?

Chess Fight Club, Part II

(Editor’s note: The first part of Ali Karim’s account of his face-off against would-be chess champ and author Charles Cumming can be found here.)

While visiting American novelist Barry Eisler chatted away with his admirers at a table in the J.D. Wetherspoon bar, at London’s O2 Centre, Charles Cumming and I squared up across a chessboard. Cumming (Typhoon, The Spanish Game) had challenged me to this match after I interviewed him in March, but it took the visit from Eisler to make it happen.

Watching my moves, Cumming remarked that I was a very aggressive player, keeping the attack up on his side. He didn’t know that I had sized him up as a top-notch player, one it would take my best strategies to put in his place. Fortunately, I had such a line of attack at hand, provided to me by spy novelist Robert Littell (The Company, Vicious Circle). And I wasn’t afraid to deploy it.

Ten moves into our game, I tried to look worried, shook my head, scratched my arms, and brought my head down close to the board. I started muttering to myself. Cumming stared at me with a puzzled expression and asked if I was all right. I replied by toppling my king, signaling my surrender. I put my hand over to his and thanked him for a tremendous game and told him how masterful his playing was.

Cumming looked at me, studied the board, then looked at me once more, utterly bewildered. “Why’d you quit?” he inquired, observing that I was in a very strong attack position. I said, giving him my best forlorn face, “You were too good.” Cumming was really confused now. He looked up and down the board. “What did you see?” he asked finally. “You beat me fair and square,” I responded, clearing the board. I asked him for a rematch, to which he consented. But Cumming’s face was still a mask of mystification.

The Littell gambit had worked. Cumming was convinced I must be such a good player, that after only 10 moves, I could see something up ahead--something he couldn’t spot himself--that made further play unnecessary, and so I had resigned with my dignity intact. Little did he know that it was all a put-on, my diabolical way of disturbing him and making him fear my strength.

We went on to play two more games in quick succession, both ending in stalemate situations and being declared draws. I could hardly help but smile; I’d knocked the legs out from under Cumming’s confidence with a neat trick. Coming to our final contest, I determined not only to beat him but to decimate him entirely. (Don’t ever let anybody tell you that chess-playing is a peaceful endeavor.) First, though, I went to the bar and ordered more beer, while Cumming set up the board again. To further shake my opponent, I told him that I wanted him to have the advantage, so I’d play black this time.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Eisler, still engaged with his new friends, but taking our game in and knowing that there was something amiss in it all--but not understanding quite what it was.

As we returned to play, I once more opened hard, forcing my pieces at Cumming’s, which irritated him. The best form of defense in chess is offensive play, pushing your opponent back and making him reactive and prone to mistakes. We both castled and exchanged queens, turning the board into less of a minefield. Cumming then started to talk about his time in Madrid, which I realized was a tactic to distract me. He told me that he’d penned an article for The Telegraph about his adventures in the Spanish capital.

Only later would I have a chance to read the piece, of course, which contrasted Madrid with London. Of the former he wrote:

I lived [t]here for three years while writing The Spanish Game, a novel about a British spy who becomes embroiled in a Basque separatist plot. My wife was a teacher at an international school in the city and we still regularly return to visit friends, eat great food and watch Real Madrid at the Bernabéu.

[Since returning to London] I miss the slower pace of life. Madrid may be a capital city, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The emphasis is on good times: long, boozy lunches, late dinners, walks in the Parque Retiro and bars that stay open beyond dawn. Madrileños tend to mind their own business. There’s none of the aggression that you find on the streets of too many British cities.

I realized that Cumming’s chatter across the chessboard was working. I soon found myself in deep trouble. The espionage writer had my king on the run. And it didn’t take long for him to regain some of his confidence and smile, as he placed his knight into position for checkmate. I looked and realized it was all over but the shouting. Cumming’s psy-ops strategy--to confound my concentration with his incessant chatter--was even better than my own.

Thank goodness, Barry Eisler chose that moment to come over and inform us that it was time for us all to have dinner.

As we packed up, I asked Cumming for a rematch and told him that next time, we’ll use tournament clocks--and I’ll bring ear defenders for myself, and a gag for him in case he tries to distract me again.

Since Eisler looked tired, and I was a bit deflated from my chess defeat, I suggested that we eat close by. So, after bidding Eisler’s table of fans good-bye, we all headed to a burger bar within the O2 complex. There we organized a table for five, as Shots contributor Ayo Onatade was joining us, and UK thriller author Boris Starling (Visibility) had called earlier in the evening and arranged to meet us for dinner, as well, wherever we wound up.

Thrill masters Barry Eisler, Boris Starling, and Charles Cumming

As we tucked into our meals, Eisler having opted for something much healthier than either Cumming or I chose (chess competition really takes the energy out of you), conversation turned to the subject of this year’s U.S. presidential election. Eisler, who often blogs about politics in The Heart of the Matter, complained that deadline pressures were preventing him from saying as much as he wanted about the race. It seems that, despite his being a self-described “conservative,” he’s a big Barack Obama supporter, believing that the U.S. senator’s principles are in line with America’s (and the world’s) needs right now. It was good listening to Eisler’s thoughtful analysis of the campaign, if in part because it allowed me to scarf down my burger without feeling the need to chime in.

Once we’d finished and were being served coffee, though, I decided to take the opportunity to whip out my tape recorder and ask Eisler a few things about book jackets, his future standalone stories, and the changing titles of his novels.

Ali Karim: Barry, you look so tired. Why so?

Barry Eisler: Yes, I am a bit knackered, as I think you say in these parts ... but that’s what finishing a set of revisions on a flight to Frankfurt, two days of interviews and meetings in Amsterdam, and then a day of signings in London will do to you! Ah, the sacrifices we authors must make ...

AK: As a veteran of book touring and the conference and convention circuit, can you tell us any funny things that have happened while you’ve been out and about?

BE: Well, any number of funny things could happen to a traveler in Amsterdam (and a few did happen to John Rain there in Requiem for an Assassin). But somehow I stayed focused on the matter at hand and managed to avoid any diplomatic incidents.

AK: So, I finally had a chance to read Requiem for an Assassin, now that it’s available in Britain. And--not to spoil anything--but when I turned the final page, I felt that this might well be the last we see of John Rain. Am I right?

BE: The truth is, I’m not sure myself. But I will say this: If there’s an overarching theme to the Rain series, it’s a question: Is redemption possible for a man who’s done the things Rain has done? I don’t know the answer, but if the series ever arrives at one, I think it’ll be time for Rain to take a rest. And at the end of Requiem, an answer was beginning to suggest itself--not definitively, but enough for me to feel the character was coming to rest. And if Rain comes to rest, he can’t drive the stories anymore. That leaves several possibilities: a standalone, like the one I just finished; a Delilah- or Dox-centric story, with Rain in a supporting role; and a Rain prequel. On that last possibility, I’ve never told the whole story of how Rain became who and what he is. There are fragments of the story in the books, but not the whole thing, and it’s a tale I’d like to discover and tell.

AK: Why did Penguin UK retitle some of your books?

BE: Neither Penguin nor I have been a fan of the U.S, approach, which might loosely be described mostly as “Rain This, Rain That.” So we agreed to use new titles instead, which are hopefully a bit more evocative of what’s actually in the books. [For more on this subject, click here and here.]

AK: And the new UK covers--they’re just great. Can you tell us about the problems with the original covers? I heard that Langley objected to one of them.

BE: Yeah, after a dismal initial effort, Penguin UK really nailed the packaging when they reissued the books. On the first iteration of the new packaging, they had included in the background the seal of the CIA. Someone at Penguin made the mistake of contacting the CIA for permission, which, unsurprisingly, the Langley bureaucracy refused. The statute the CIA cited as justification was inapposite, but Penguin didn’t want to take a chance on running afoul of the Agency. I begged my editor to issue the books anyway, with a big florescent sticker on the front reading, “The author’s previous employer, the Central Intelligence Agency, has not authorized, approved, or endorsed this book.” That would have satisfied the criteria of the (anyway inapposite) statute and made for an eye-catching cover hook, but alas ...

The good news is, the second iteration of the new covers was dramatically better than the first, and for this I suppose I must thank some anonymous toiler in the bowels of Langley. [For more on, check out the article “How to Package a Book.”]

AK: And what’s this about your publishing a standalone novel next year? Would you care to enlighten us a bit on that subject?

BE: It’s a thriller, though not set in Rain’s universe. Haven’t quite decided on a title yet, but the book is the story of two brothers, estranged by old but still-simmering family hurts and by conflicting cultural and life choices, who are forced to put aside their grievances, and to confront their own painful secrets, when one of them becomes a target in an international struggle for control of a powerful new technology. Here’s some jacket copy I’ve been noodling around with:

“In Silicon Valley, the eccentric inventor of a new encryption program is murdered in an apparent drug deal.

“In Istanbul, a cynical undercover operative receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he is the next victim.

“And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley’s nerve center of deal-making and finance, cultures collide in a desperate contest for control of a new technology--a technology with the power to create unimaginable wealth, or to destroy global information systems, all at the click of a mouse ...”

AK: Will we ever see Rain’s good-ol’ boy sniper partner, Dox [introduced in 2005’s One Last Kill, aka Killing Rain], featured in his own adventure? He could certainly carry one.

BE: You’ll see him soon--in a short story I’m doing for Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press. And I wouldn’t rule out future outings, as well.

AK: And didn’t I hear something about a Japanese film adaptation of the John Rain novels coming soon?

BE: Glad to say the rumors are true--Sony is in preproduction now, with Gary Oldman signed to play Rain’s CIA nemesis, William Holtzer. The word is the movie will be released in March 2009--keep your fingers crossed!

AK: Since you are passionate about politics, can you tell us where and when this passion originated?

BE: Good question, and the truth is, I’m not really sure where it comes from. I wasn’t all that interested in or engaged by the world until I was in college, and then something happened--a kind of intellectual puberty, you might say. Since then, politics and foreign affairs have been a serious hobby of mine, part of what led me to a job with the CIA. Blogging is good for me: besides being just plain fun, it helps me focus my ideas, some of which form back-story for my novels, and the outlet is a kind of release valve for the pressure that builds up in my mind from all the things I read.

AK: And your prediction for this year’s U.S. presidential election ...?

BE: Obama looks unstoppable to me, and that’s a good thing.

AK: What books have passed over your table lately, that you’ve been especially pleased to read?

BE: So many it’s hard to know where to start. But one in particular I read recently that blew me away--in fact, I’d call it one of the best books I’ve ever read. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Dictated solely by eye blinks by the 43-year-old editor of Elle in France after he was struck down by a massive stroke and afflicted with what is aptly (and horrifyingly) known as Locked-In Syndrome, this short book is by turns surprisingly funny, bitterly painful, and always achingly beautiful. Have you ever watched, say, Cirque de Soleil and marveled at the capabilities of the human body? Multiply that astonishment and wonder by an order of magnitude and apply it to the human spirit--that’s this book.

A little closer to home, lately I’ve discovered two terrific writers everyone else seems to know about: Charlie Huston and James Lee Burke. If you haven’t read their crime fiction yet, check ’em out and see what you’ve been missing.

* * *

Just as the waitress was clearing our table, author Boris Starling finally arrived, apologizing profusely for his tardiness. Starling is a fan of Eisler’s work, and Eisler has seen and enjoyed the TV editions of Messiah, the 1999 book most associated with Starling and which featured Ken Stott (who now plays Scottish detective John Rebus on television). So they had lots to talk about. But after a while, the exhaustion created by my tournament with Cumming caught up with me, and I had to say my farewells. As I left in company with Eisler and Ayo Onatade, I saw Cumming pulling out his chessboard once more and gesturing to Starling for a game. He was feeling awfully confident after trouncing me, it seems.

Only later did I hear that Starling beat my erstwhile opponent two games out of two.

READ MORE: “Quiet Death in Xinjiang,” by Charles Cumming (The Guardian).

Chess Fight Club, Part I

A couple of weeks ago, after I’d interviewed the debonair British espionage writer Charles Cumming (Typhoon, The Spanish Game) for The Rap Sheet, he challenged me to a round or two of chess. It seems we’re both big fans of the game. We didn’t actually schedule the match, but also didn’t have to wait long to begin it, thanks to ex-CIA agent-turned-novelist Barry Eisler.

I first met Eisler in Las Vegas back in 2003, when he was at Bouchercon promoting the U.S. paperback release of Rain Fall, his debut novel and the one that introduced his Japanese-American assassin, John Rain. We literally bumped into each other in a corridor at the Riviera Hotel and Casino. Since then, I’ve encountered him at various conventions and conferences, and I shared a few glasses of Scotch with him at ThrillerFest last summer, when he and fellow Penguin authors Cumming and Nick Stone got together to celebrate Stone having won the Thriller Award for his novel Mr. Clarinet.

Eisler e-mailed me recently to say that he was flying through London, following some promotional and editorial work he’d done for his Dutch publisher in Amsterdam. He would be doing an event at Books Etc. in North London’s O2 Centre, touting the UK release of his latest novel, Requiem for an Assassin, and asked that Cumming, Stone, and I meet him for dinner afterward. I quickly rang up Cumming and told him to bring along a chess board, bandages, and a white flag. Former boxer Stone would supply the gum shield. My own training for this engagement consisted of reading Ronan Bennett’s Zugzwang, a fiendish thriller based around a chess game, as well as re-reading Typhoon, hoping to get inside Cumming’s mind a bit.

I left a bit early for the O2 Centre. I enjoy the atmosphere of North London, and was in fact there recently to attend the launch party for Laura Wilson’s novel Stratton’s War. Many authors, including those who write about the spy game and who pen historical mysteries, seem to live in this area of the British capital. It’s also been a favorite setting for espionage novels. Finchley Road, off which the O2 Centre is located, leads to the Jewish area of London, Golders Green, which allegedly contains several Mossad safehouses. As I drove down Finchley, my mind drifted back to a conversation I had a couple of years ago with American writer Robert Littell, who had used Golders Green in his 2006 novel, Legends, and who’d told me about a chess strategy that might come in handy this day.

I was smiling by the time I parked my car at O2 Centre and found Books Etc. Inside, grinning as well, was Cumming, who taunted me by waving his chess set as if it were a trophy. We were soon seated together, and then joined by mystery woman and my fellow Shots contributor Ayo Onatade, another big Eisler fan. Soon after that, my cell phone commenced ringing, with Nick Stone apologizing that he was stuck in Paris due to the recent debacle at Heathrow’s Terminal 5; we’d have to go on without him.

Eisler arrived at the bookshop sporting a dark T-shirt and brown sports jacket. He looked tired, but was soon energized when around 80 readers arrived to listen to him talk and sign copies of his books. Eisler hasn’t done a book tour in the UK, so an appearance like this was a major occurrence for his hardcore British fans. A witty speaker, Eisler not only talked about his writing habits and the Rain series, but was excited to discuss the filming of that series in Japan (as reported by Mike Stotter). On this topic, I decided to throw him something of a curve. In my namesake Ali G’s style, I asked whether he was disappointed by Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of his assassin, John Rain, and what it felt like when Hollywood mangled one of his books. He looked dumbfounded at first, but then started to laugh as I explained, “You know ... Rain Man with Tom Cruise ... ”

After his talk, a long line of people formed in hopes of Eisler signing their books. While we waited for him, Cumming told me a little about an interesting Internet writing project he’s involved in called “We Tell Stories,” and to which he contributed a tale called “The 21 Steps.” “The story has had 80,000 hits in 12 days,” Cumming explained. “It was commissioned by Penguin as a homage to John Buchan’s [The] Thirty-nine Steps, to be written specifically for Google Maps. Five other writers from the Penguin stable are also involved, including Toby Litt and the pseudonymous Nicci French. Newsweek, The Guardian, and Süddeutsche Zeitung [one of Germany’s largest daily newspapers] have all written about it, and it has been discussed on more than 350 blogs.”

It was at this point that Cumming noticed Bennett’s Zugzwang peeping out of my book bag. This was of course part one of my psy-ops strategy to destabilize and worry Cumming prior to our match. Being well-read in the espionage genre, I know a thing or two about covert techniques. But my plan was not working, as Cumming cheerfully told me that he knows Bennett well and that the author writes a chess column in The Guardian every Monday (in conjunction with British Grand Master Dan King). Bennett apparently won a tournament in Cumming’s chess club, and is probably the strongest player in that club. It was now starting to look as if Cumming might have a chess background to rival my own. “My chess club is called the Jose-Raul Capablanca Memorial Chess Society,” Cumming said. “Set up in 2004 after my return from Madrid. We have five tournaments per year with about 30 participants. Capablanca was a Cuban Grand Master, rated one of the top five players of all time. He did very little preparation, instead relying on pure talent and instinct. The Cuban government made him a diplomat so that he could travel the world playing chess--and winning--in the name of Cuba.”

It seemed to me that Cumming was also playing the psy-ops game, which was hardly surprising, considering his contacts in Britain’s SIS and his public school background. I realized then that I might have a real fight on my hands.

After Barry Eisler finished his signing, he invited Cumming and me to join him, along with a small cadre of his avid reader fans, at the J.D. Wetherspoon bar, nearby in the O2 Centre. And while Eisler chatted there with his new friends, plus Ayo Onatade, Cumming and I ordered a couple of pints of Guinness and set up our chess board. I saw that my opponent had brought tournament clocks, but I told him to put them away, as this would be a non-time challenge. Turning up my smile again on Cumming, I told him that I’d play black this game, which gave him the advantage. And I again mulled the strategic advice Littell had shared with me:

I adore chess. It is a killer game, it’s not checkers, nor like a card game ... Chess players look calm and collected, but in their mind they are out to castrate their opponent. ... My way of playing is exactly that--to kill my opponent as brutally as I can.

And my idea [for a difficult opponent] is to make only eight to 10 moves, then scratch my head, and then look up at him, then scratch my head, then look up again with a worried expression and then say, “Well, done.” [Laughs] And then [I’d] resign, and shake his hand, ... leaving him confused as to what I had seen ahead of the game. He would then either smile and fake that he saw what I had seen ahead, or just look stupid and confused, so diabolical minds think alike.

Speaking of diabolical minds, Cumming put his on display right away when, after looking over the board, he suddenly announced that “I’ll play black,” and twisted the board around. Hey, who am I to argue with one of Britain’s top espionage writers?

I watched his first move, and responded immediately. At this point, Eisler tore his attention away from his admirers and, in our direction, said, “Looks like a grudge match.” He knew how seriously both Cumming and I take chess. What he didn’t know is that this was all part of my Littell-inspired strategy to shake Cumming’s confidence. I was now convinced that my opponent might be the strong player, and I’d need every clever move in the book--and then some--to triumph.

(Part II of this story can be found here.)

It’s the Cumming Thing

(Editor’s note: This is the second and final installment of Ali Karim’s report on the recent Penguin crime-fiction party. Part One--which includes an interview with Nick Stone--can be found here. To read about last year’s Penguin soirée, click here.)

So, after knocking back our drinks at London’s Marques of Granby pub, Penguin authors Nick Stone and Charles Cumming joined the Shots Webzine team of Mike Stotter, Mike Ripley, Ayo Onatade, and I, as we traversed Charing Cross Road and headed to the Union Club in Soho to attend the Penguin fête.

Upon arrival, we quickly doffed our jackets and headed for the bar. There we encountered the usual suspect reviewers, writers, and critics, among them Peter Guttridge of The Observer, Crime Squad editor Chris Simmons, and author Natasha Cooper, as well as men-about-town Barry Forshaw and Maxim Jakubowski.

Penguin senior editor and publisher Rowland White and I chatted about his success with the non-fiction book Vulcan 607, having to do with a British military mission to destroy an Argentinean-held airstrip during the 1982 Falklands War. And I went on from White to strike up a conversation with journalists-turned-crime authors Sean French and Nicci Gerrard, who write under the pseudonym Nicci French. They let me know how impressed they had been to read in The Rap Sheet that poet-crime novelist Sophie Hannah (The Point of Rescue) is a fan of their work. I first met the French duo at Dead-on-Deansgate in 2001, and have enjoyed their paranoiac view of urban relationships and madness ever since. I just received their latest tale, Until It’s Over, and am looking for a chance to read it. (You can catch the first chapter of Until It’s Over here.)

Other Penguin stalwarts in attendance were Andrew Taylor (Bleeding Heart Square), who has recently joined us in the blogosphere, and Jim Kelly, author of the journalist Philip Dryden series (The Coldest Blood). But there were some bright newcomers scattered among this crowd as well, including R.S. “Ruth” Downie (Terra Incognita) and Caro Ramsey (Absolution). The Penguin editorial and publicity staff of Alex Clark, Clare Pollock, and others did their usual bang-up job of keeping us well fed and watered (never let it be said that book critics can’t put away the victuals), and also pointed me to several up-and-coming authors. Among those was the delightful Felix Francis, the son of equine crime-fiction master Dick Francis. It seems that since the loss of his wife, Mary, in 2000, Francis Senior has brought his younger son into the writing fold. Last year they jointly produced Dead Heat (due out presently in paperback), and Felix told me that he’s relishing working with his father on their next novel, Silks, which is due out this coming summer.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a friendly face emerging from the throng. With his Steve Hamilton-style haircut, Marcus Sakey (At the City’s Edge) was easy to spot; but then again, as a man of color, so am I. I was a bit surprised to be shaking Sakey’s hand. It seems he was Penguin UK’s sole American author in attendance at this year’s party (his debut novel, The Blade Itself, having just been released in Britain), and he came over with his charming wife to spend a week in London. While we all chattered away, Stotter tottered over to join in. Since Sakey found Stotter’s cockney rhyming slang a bit of a tough go, I volunteered to interpret. Stotter wanted to give the Sakeys a few tips on where to go while they were in the British capital, including forays to the metropolis’ darker edges, which might be useful for Sakey’s research. (Being a writer is a full-time occupation, after all.) I, meanwhile, was just as interested in talking about plans to turn The Blade Itself into a movie.

Finally, I sought out the inscrutable Charles Cumming once more, hoping to corner him for a quick interview. After ordering a couple of pints of Guinness, we retreated to a private book at the back of the Union Club, where I placed my trusty tape recorder on the table and got down to the tough questioning. No need for the Bush White House’s favorite sport, water-boarding. Cumming cracked like an egg on every subject from his reading history and his association with British Intelligence, to his passion for chess.

Ali Karim: I see you studied English Literature at university. Did you come from a bookish family?

Charles Cumming: Not at all. There were very few books in either house (my parents separated when I was 7). I can’t remember ever seeing my mother reading a novel during my childhood, probably because she was working so hard. She ran a small catering company, then a hotel, so there wasn’t much time for reading. My father read political biographies and Frederick Forsyth, but that was it. For about 15 years all he had beside his bed were three well-thumbed copies of The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, and The Fourth Protocol--and [British politician] Nigel Lawson’s memoirs.

AK: And what of your own early readings?

CC: I tried The Day of the Jackal in about 1982, but I was too young for it. Before that there was Willard Price and Ian Fleming. To be honest, as a child I was a very lazy reader. I much preferred television. At school we would be assigned a book to read over the holidays and the thought of getting through it was almost debilitating. Mansfield Park springs to mind. I remember being dazzled by [Scott Turow’s] Presumed Innocent at 16 or 17. I can still recall the first line: “This is how I always begin.” Then Catcher in the Rye, Less Than Zero, Macbeth, Equus. Those were the books and plays that got under my skin at school. The single most important book of my adolescence was Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. A friend leant it to me the summer I left Eton and it was a complete revelation. I suddenly understood the power of language.

AK: Who encouraged your own writing?

CC: Three people, in particular: my father, who recognized that I had talent and never once, God bless him, advised me to get a proper job; my English teacher at Eton, Angus Graham-Campbell, who was so enigmatic and inscrutable that I wanted to get his attention; and my wife. I wrote A Spy by Nature [2001] to impress her. She says that from a young age she always knew that she was going to marry a writer in a garret …

AK: Are you an aficionado of espionage fiction?

CC: Not really. After what happened with SIS [aka MI6] I read a lot of [John] le Carré, but I really don’t know [Len] Deighton at all, nor the big Americans—[Tom] Clancy, [Robert] Littell, and [Robert] Ludlum. I love Charles McCarry, ditto Dan Fesperman. On a research trip to China I discovered Eric Ambler, who is amazing. Graham Greene is a hero of mine, on and off the page, but obviously his range went beyond pure espionage.

AK: Who have you read that you consider influential not only in your own work, but in the espionage-fiction genre generally?

CC: This might sound strange coming from a spy novelist, but the books which have most inspired me are [John] Updike’s Rabbit novels, late Philip Roth, Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter, and everything by Martin Amis up to London Fields. Aside from those, Le Carré is obviously the single biggest influence on my work. If you accept that there are two strands in spy fiction, an escapist strand and a non-escapist strand, then Le Carré is the godfather of the latter. Like Ambler, [John] Buchan, and Greene before him, he has used the world of espionage as a platform for examining issues of morality and conscience, human weakness and personal ambition. That’s definitely what I’ve set out to do. All of us in the present generation--Fesperman, Daniel Silva, Henry Porter--are indebted to what Le Carré has achieved. By the way, I don’t mean to suggest that serious themes are not touched on in the escapist tradition, just that they are not touched on for very long. [For] Ian Fleming and Ludlum, for example, excitement is everything; what you might loosely call emotional or psychological content is sacrificed to the demands of the story.

AK: The last time we met was during ThrillerFest in New York, where you, Barry Eisler, and Nick Stone all ended up drinking Mike Stotter’s malt Scotch. So, apart from that night, please tell us about your highlights from ThrillerFest.

CC: I don’t remember anything after I drank all of Mike’s Scotch.

AK: I read that A Spy by Nature was influenced by a real-life encounter with British Intelligence. Are you still in contact with MI6?

CC: I have a very good friend who works for SIS, who wouldn’t thank me for saying too much about our relationship. Let’s just say that he/she has been very helpful all the way through my career.

AK: I wonder if your public-school background, or your remarkable height had anything to do with SIS’s interest … [In the photo at left, Cumming is the towering presence on the right, while I’m the other bloke.]

CC: The Foreign Office still drools over public schoolboys. There’s a certain sort of very charming, very bright old Etonian (David Cameron is the archetype) who reminds the Foreign Office of what it used to be and therefore allows for a certain continuity in style. The British military is also very pro-public school, possibly for the same reasons. The other day somebody told me that 60 percent of the commanding officers in the SAS [British Special Air Service] are old Etonians. As far as my height is concerned, I don’t think SIS ever had me earmarked for surveillance work, but there’s no doubt I would have stood out from the crowd at a cocktail party in, say, Lima or Seoul. “He’s the spy,” they would have said. “The one who looks like Peter Crouch.”

AK: A Spy by Nature was your first novel published, but was it the first written? Do you a few unpublished manuscripts in your desk drawer?

CC: A Spy by Nature was my first novel and it was bought as a completed manuscript. However, Penguin signed me to a two-book deal. The Hidden Man [2003] is a version of a screenplay that I wrote immediately after leaving university. The screenplay was about a man who walks out on his son and then comes back into his life 20 years later. It wasn’t a spy story. Most of the building blocks of The Hidden Man--the espionage, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Russian mafia in London, the relationship between the two brothers--came later as I was writing the novel.

AK: I really enjoyed The Spanish Game [2006], which featured Alec Milius, who was also in A Spy by Nature, whereas The Hidden Man and your latest novel, Typhoon [2008], are standalones. Which do your prefer--the palpable freedom of a standalone or the comforts of continuity, in series novels?

CC: Of the four books I’ve written, The Spanish Game was by far the easiest to write because I knew Alec Milius already. That made so many decisions so much easier. I didn’t have to ask myself, “How would Alec react in this situation? What would he feel?” I just instinctively knew. Typhoon was by far the hardest, because I was writing about a new character that was the deliberate flip of Alec. Joe Lennox is noble, patriotic, heroic. Also, I had never written a book about a serving SIS officer; up to that point my characters had always been on the outside of the secret world, looking in. Typhoon was also difficult because China is a massive subject in terms of research. With The Spanish Game, I lived in Madrid for three years and knew the city inside out. For Typhoon, I spent less than two weeks in Shanghai, five days in Hong Kong, and five days in Beijing. The rest of the time I was stuck in London with two small children keeping me up all night! I would never have taken on such a big challenge if The Spanish Game hadn’t given me the confidence to write about a foreign country.

AK: Your work has been highly acclaimed for its authenticity and take on the “Alice through the looking-glass” world of espionage. Tell us about your research methods.

CC: A lot of it is common sense. How do you earn someone’s trust? How would you follow a person from A to B? How do you know when a person is lying to you? But I also read a lot, watch a lot of documentaries, and have good contacts in the intelligence community. For example, in The Hidden Man, MI5 break into an office. A friend at Thames House [MI5’s London headquarters] told me that such operations are undertaken twice: once as a dress rehearsal, to iron out any potential problems, and then as the real thing, when they go after the information. There’s no way a layman would know that; as a strategy, it doesn’t seem to make sense. It surely doubles your chances of being caught. But MI5 see it as doubling their chances of being successful.

AK: There was a three-year gap between The Hidden Man and the appearance of The Spanish Game. What happened during that period? Or did the Madrid adventure just take longer to write?

CC: The simple answer is that I don’t find writing particularly easy. It usually takes me two years to write a novel. From memory, Spanish Game was ready for publication in 2005, but was pushed back by six months for marketing reasons. I was relieved to see Nick Stone … saying that he would find it impossible to write a book every year, which is what is now being asked of thriller writers. I would find it very difficult, too, at least in the long-term. Artistically it’s impossible to maintain a level of quality without burn-out unless you’re supremely talented or blessed with extraordinary reserves of mental and physical strength. I also think the reading public will eventually tire of writers who churn out essentially the same book year after year after year.

AK: I notice that like your fellow espionage writer Robert Littell, you are a chess player. Tell me about your relationship with chess.

CC: I love it. I was taught at the age of 10 by a beautiful Scottish babysitter and never looked back! I started up a club when I came back to London from Madrid in 2004. It’s called The Jose-Raul Capablanca Memorial Chess Society. Boris Starling (who wrote Messiah) is a fellow member. I beat him in the quarter-finals at the last tournament. He still hasn’t properly recovered.

AK: Fancy a game, as I am a little bit of chess player myself? It would give us the chance to record a lengthier interview in the process of your defeat.

CC: [Laughing] That is a challenge you will regret. Bring it on, Ali. I will destroy you.

AK: [Laughing] In your dreams! Anyway, back to the subject of your work … Your latest novel, Typhoon, is backdropped by the friction between the United States and its biggest trading partner, China. Can you give us some background on that work?

CC: When I finished writing The Spanish Game in 2004, I started to look around for a new subject and China just seemed the obvious choice. The economic boom, the Olympics--it was obviously going to be The Next Big Thing. Editors were sick of Al-Qaeda, sick of 9/11, and I was aware that nobody had really touched China since The Honourable Schoolboy [1977]. Thematically, it was also riveting: the West’s economic greed versus its commitment to human rights; Britain’s colonial past in Hong Kong and Shanghai; the apparent decline of the American empire and the rampant growth of 21st-century China.

AK: Were you nervous writing about something so topical, especially in light of the U.S. economy’s recent financial problems, linked as they are to the weakness of the American dollar and that nation’s relationship with China?

CC: The hardest problem was finding a way to make China interesting to western readers. Writing about people making money isn’t particularly fascinating, and China is all about people making money. That’s where [the] Xinjiang [region of northwestern China] came in. As soon as I learned about the plight of the Uighur people, and Xinjiang’s strategic importance in what Lutz Kleveman calls “the New Great Game,” I was in. If it doesn’t sound too grandiose, Typhoon became a metaphor for the lunacy of American intervention overseas, a way of talking about Iraq without actually writing a novel about Iraq.

AK: When is Typhoon due for release? And are there any plans for a Chinese edition?

CC: Typhoon is out in June [in the UK]. If the Chinese have any sense, they’ll ban it.

AK: What books have passed over your reading table recently that you’ve enjoyed?

CC: I absolutely loved The Ghost, by Robert Harris, and said so in a review I wrote for The Mail on Sunday. Harris gave me a wonderful plug for A Spy by Nature, so it looked as though I was scratching his back. But I genuinely thought it was first-class: funny, smart, gripping, and very well-written. I’m also reading Putin’s Progress, a fascinating biography of the all-new “Vlad the Impaler,” by Peter Truscott. It’s research for a novel I’m planning.

AK: And lastly, considering your own education, when you see fellow public-school boys such as Jeremy Irons and Alan Rickman--both featured as baddies in the Die Hard films--why do you think the British public school boy makes such a wonderful movie bad-guy?

CC: It must be something to do with the gap between an audience’s expectations of a well-spoken, impeccably dressed, refined English gentleman and the reality of their behavior. You only have to think of Kim Philby: charming, witty, attractive, well-connected--and yet underneath it all, completely ruthless and amoral.

* * *

After this grilling, Cumming and I returned to the party, where a number of us toasted to the success of Typhoon, before thanking the Penguin team for their hospitality and heading off for our various destinations. I knew this wouldn’t be my last encounter with Charles Cumming, however. There’s still that chess challenge to be had.

If you would like to see all of the photos from the Penguin crime-fiction party, click here.