Kennedy 35

"Yes, and Charles has done a fair bit of research. I saw his photographs from Senegal. I think both he and Vidich are great at transporting us to locations. Even though I’ve never been to Senegal or Beirut, I felt it was authentic, the way they described the food and the smells and the nature and the landscape. Kennedy 35 is the third in the Lachlan Kite series, and I feel Cumming has found his feet with this one. The other two were good; I enjoyed them. It was notable that this one was a smaller book, so a faster read, because Box 88 , the first one, was quite chunky. I like the two timelines. I’ve learned in our Spybrary community that some readers struggle with two timelines, but Cumming has a knack for being able to fuse them together in a way that they’re not jarring, and you know where you are. A good device he has to remind us of what era we are in is that when he goes back to the 1990s, he writes about music that was very much of its time playing in the bar. I thought that was a fun way of doing it. Both timelines are very interesting, very intriguing. It’s almost like you’re getting two books for the price of one—two good books. We see Lachlan Kite in Senegal in the 1990s. His girlfriend is very ill. They’re involved in a stakeout—they’re going to snatch a war criminal from Rwanda. There are plenty of twists and turns. You’re worried about how that snatch is going to go and also what’s happening with his girlfriend, in the middle of Senegal, very ill. Then you’re smack-bang in the modern-life timeline. Having built up the character, he’s very good at fusing the two timelines. I think, in some ways, this is lazy reviewing, but some people talk about Cumming as ‘the next le Carré’ or ‘in the footsteps of le Carré’. Le Carré was famous for building up this whole world and creating his own vocabulary for it. ‘The Circus’ was the head office of the Secret Service at the time; the Lamplighters were the technicians; and there are the scalphunters. Cumming does this as well. I should probably write up a glossary of all the different words and terms he’s using. I’ve seen more and more spy writers do this. Charles Beaumont does it in his book as well. I love it because it’s building that whole world for us to go and explore—a world that we’ve never been privy to. The Cathedral, for instance, is the nickname of the London headquarters for his agency. Falcon are the surveillance specialists. The Closers is the military arm. I really get excited when spy authors do this and create their own worlds."