Three British assets that were being run out of the Istanbul
office have been killed. All within a few weeks of each other. An opposition
journalist, also friendly to the Istanbul office, has been put in prison without
due process.
The cover for the well-seasoned agent running them, Paul
Wallinger, is that he is a career diplomat. His wife and two adult children
live in England. While the son was Paul’s favored child, his daughter was
mostly estranged because of his job and lifestyle. Paul had planned a weekend
on a Grecian island with his current paramour, a former Hungarian agent now
restauranteur in Croatia. After the weekend, Paul climbed into the pilot seat
of a rented Cessna headed home to Istanbul, but for unexplained reasons, this experienced
pilot crashes.
At Paul’s funeral, his SIS boss, Amelia, enlists the help of
Tom Kell, a recently ‘retired’ agent. A couple years ago (and one book
earlier), Kell was involved with a rendition that went south. The CIA operative
was at fault, but somehow, Tom ended up taking the fall.
Amelia wants Tom to investigate Paul’s death, setting him up
as an insurance investigator. He heads off for Istanbul, the Greek Island, the
coastal Croatian town, and back to Istanbul trying to get a feel for what
happened. But also to see if there is a mole behind it all.
The mechanic who serviced the plane inexplicably commits
suicide. The Hungarian woman is killed in her apartment. Either the mole or the
Russian handler is trying to tie off loose ends.
Amelia thinks the mole could be any one of 5 or 6 people and
Tom is assigned to look into Ryan, a ‘Cousin’ in Istanbul (Cousin = CIA). While
the Brits and the Yanks are on the same side, they are still adversaries in a
dangerous game.
Kell and his team of watchers keep very tight surveillance
on Ryan, but when the Russian handler digs into Kell and his relationship with Rachel,
Wallinger’s daughter, he makes a couple guesses and concludes that Ryan is
blown. Now the real chase begins as Kell and team try to keep up with Ryan’s
extraction plan.
Tom is a disgraced
agent given the gift of opportunity to get back into a game he has sorely
missed. While most readers will assume that Kell will catch his man,
what you wont’ expect are the consequences of the capture which Cumming skillfully
uses to set up the 3rd in the Tom Kell series.Cumming has a brief but very successful writing career with one trilogy
done and two books into this Tom Kell series, with both current titles achieving
NYT best seller status. A talented writer with a creative imagination that
keeps the well-trod mole hunt theme current and engaging. A little slow to get
going, but once Tom gets the scent, the pace picks up considerably..
ECD
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