Skip to main content

Charles Cumming

Biography

Charles Cumming

Charles Cumming is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of 12 novels, including A SPY BY NATURE, TYPHOON, THE TRINITY SIX, the Thomas Kell trilogy and the Box 88 series. He is also the screenwriter of the Gerard Butler action movie Plane. His new novel, KENNEDY 35, finds BOX 88 officer Lachlan Kite on the trail of a Rwandan war criminal in 1990s Senegal.

Charles Cumming

Books by Charles Cumming

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, 24-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices that will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha. 2023: Eric Appiah, an old friend from Kite’s days at school and an off-the-record BOX 88 asset, makes contact with explosive information about what happened all those years ago in West Africa. When tragedy strikes, Kite must use all the resources at his disposal to protect Martha from a criminal network with links to international terror.

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

1993: Student Lachlan Kite is sent to post-Soviet Russia, a spy in the guise of a language teacher. Embedded in the town of Voronezh, Kite’s mission is to extract a chemical weapons scientist before the man’s groundbreaking research falls into the wrong hands and shuttle him across the border to freedom in Ukraine. But Kite’s mission soon goes wrong, and he is left stranded in a hostile city with a former KGB officer on his trail. 2020: Thirty years after that dangerous mission, Kite discovers that its outcome put his name on the notorious “JUDAS” list --- a record of enemies of Russia who have been targeted for assassination. Kite’s fight for survival takes him to Dubai, where he enters into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the Russian secret state.

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence. But even the best spy can’t anticipate every potential threat in a world where dangerous actors lurk around every corner. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being held as collateral for the information he’s sworn on his own life to protect. In order to save his family, Lachlan will be forced to revisit painful memories of a special assignment from 30 years ago that allowed him special access to one of Iran’s most dangerous men.

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Renowned author Kit Carradine is approached by an MI6 officer with a seemingly straightforward assignment: to track down a mysterious woman hiding somewhere in the exotic, perilous city of Marrakesh. Lara Bartok is a leading figure in Resurrection, a violent revolutionary movement whose brutal attacks on prominent right-wing public figures have spread hatred and violence across the world. Caught between increasingly dangerous forces who want Bartok dead, Carradine soon faces an awful choice: to abandon this brilliant, beautiful and profoundly complex woman to her fate, or to risk everything trying to save her.

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

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 its 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?

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Christopher Keen, once a master spy, is murdered in cold blood. His sons Mark and Benjamin, though they hadn't seen their father for over 20 years, are now drawn into the legacy of his life as a spy as they set out to discover the truth and avenge their father's death. But as their search proceeds, more questions arise. Is Christopher's death connected to his past life in MI6? Was his eldest son involved in a conspiracy that links him to Moscow, Afghanistan and the Russian mafia?

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

A top-ranking Iranian military official is killed while trying to defect to the West. An investigative journalist is imprisoned for writing an article critical of the Turkish government. An Iranian nuclear scientist is assassinated on the streets of Tehran. Then Paul Wallinger, MI6’s most senior agent in Turkey, dies in a puzzling plane crash. Fearing the worst, MI6 bypasses the usual protocol and brings disgraced agent Tom Kell in from the cold to investigate. Kell soon discovers what Wallinger already had begun to suspect --- that there’s a mole somewhere in the Western intelligence.

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

On the vacation of a lifetime in Egypt, an elderly French couple are brutally murdered. Days later, a meticulously-planned kidnapping takes place on the streets of Paris. Amelia Levene, the first female Chief of MI6, has disappeared without a trace, six weeks before she is due to take over as the most influential spy in Europe. Desperate not only to find her, but to keep her disappearance a secret, Britain’s top intelligence agents turn to one of their own: disgraced MI6 officer Thomas Kell.

by Charles Cumming - Fiction, Thriller

London, 1992. Late one night, 76-year-old Edward Crane is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a “resourceful career diplomat.” But Crane was much more than that --- and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from what they seem.