Charles Cumming is fast becoming a name to watch amongst the best of spy thriller writers. His books are tight, fast paced and full of juicy detail about how real spy games are played. His latest, Box 88, has been receiving rave reviews and it’s not hard to see why. It is a gripping tale of espionage past and present with Lachlan Kite (‘Lockie’) caught in the middle of it all.
In 1989, Scot Lachlan Kite, a fresh-faced boarding school student, is recruited by an elite secret organisation known only to a few at the very top of MI6 and the CIA – a shadowy black-ops unit called BOX 88. Tasked with gathering intelligence on a dangerous Iranian businessman, Lockie’s assignment takes him to France and onto the front line of a new secret war.
But the war doesn’t end there. Bos88 Three decades later, at the funeral of a friend, BOX 88 operative Lachlan Kite is kidnapped by an Iranian group that’s on his tail. It is a race between his colleagues at the elusive agency and the ruthless terrorists on his heels to find him before it’s too late.
Lockie is being interrogated and the kidnappers want him to divulge information about his work for BOX 88 but he refuses. He has his own secrets to protect and to do that he will have to revisit a dark past, reconnect with people he’s tried to forget and put himself in danger all over again.
This is a fast-paced and highly enjoyable spy thriller with a strong sense of time and place. It moves back and forth between the 80s when Lockie was at school and starting his spying career and the present day when he is being held captive by the ruthless Iranians and the mole within BOX 88 trying to turn him over to their side. A superb read and one to look out for in the future.
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