Typhoon

From the winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012 for Best Thriller of the Year comes a gripping and suspenseful spy novel. Perfect for fans of John le Carré, Charles Cumming is ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday) Hong Kong, 1997. Only a few short months of British rule remain before the territory returns to Chinese control. It’s a feverish city. And the spooks are hard at work, jostling for position and influence. So when an elderly man emerges from the sea, claiming to know secrets he will share only with the British Governor, a young MI6 officer, Joe Lennox, sees the chance to make his reputation. But when the old man, a high-profile Chinese professor, is spirited away in the middle of the night by the CIA, it’s clear that there’s a great deal more at stake here than a young spy’s career. The professor holds the key to a sinister and ambitious plan that could have catastrophic repercussions for the world in the twenty-first century…

Praise for Typhoon: ‘Gripping, cleverly plotted, meticulously researched’ Mail on Sunday ‘Cumming gives us complex characters and a world-weariness that owe more to Smiley than Bond and mark him out as in the first rank of the new generation of espionage writers’ The Times – Top 10 Thrillers of 2008 ‘If you read one spy novel this year, make it Typhoon’ The London Paper ‘A wholly compelling and sophisticated spy novel - vivid and disturbing - immaculately researched and full of harrowing contemporary relevance’ William Boyd Praise for A Foreign Country: ‘We are in Smiley country, but with extra 21st century nuance … Cumming has an exquisite touch and we should treasure him’ Daily Mail ‘A thriller that has everything you could ask for – a twisty, sexy plot, topical themes, memorable characters and plentiful spy lore’ Sunday Times, Books of the Year ‘Refreshing, plausible and effective … Best of all is the sheer pace of the narrative’ Spectator ‘You are likely to be up for most of the night to find out how this novel ends. It grips from the first page … A fast-moving treat’ The Scotsman

Charles Cumming was born in Scotland in 1971. He has been described as ‘the man who most successfully gets under the skin of Britain’s intelligence agencies’ (The Times). In the summer of 1995, he was approached for recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A year later he moved to Montreal where he began working on a novel based on his experiences with MI6, and A Spy by Nature was published in the UK in 2001.