The Hidden Man [Import] [Paperback]

CHARLES CUMMING (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: MICHAEL JOSEPH LTD (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 071814452X
• ISBN-13: 978-0718144524
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,056,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Cumming is a British writer of spy fiction. He was educated at Eton College (1985-1989) and the University of Edinburgh (1990-1994), where he graduated with 1st Class Honours in English Literature. The Observer has described him as "the best of the new generation of British spy writers who are taking over where John le Carré and Len Deighton left off".

In 1995, Charles Cumming was approached for recruitment by the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A Spy By Nature, a novel partly based on his experiences with MI6, was published in 2001. The novel's hero, Alec Milius, is a flawed loner in his early 20s who is recruited by MI6 to sell doctored research data on oil exploration in the Caspian Sea to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In 2001, Charles Cumming moved to Madrid. His second novel, The Hidden Man (2003), tells the story of two brothers investigating the murder of their father, a former SIS officer, at the hands of the Russian mafia. The Hidden Man also examines the clandestine role played by SIS and the CIA during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

Charles Cumming's third novel, The Spanish Game (2006), marks the return of anti-hero Alec Milius, who becomes involved in a plot by the paramilitary Basque nationalist organization ETA to bring down the Spanish government. The Spanish Game was described by The Times as one of the six finest spy novels of all time, alongside Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Funeral in Berlin and The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Typhoon, published in 2008, is a political thriller about a CIA plot to destabilise China on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. The story spans the decade from the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997 to present-day Shanghai. In particular, the author highlights the plight of the Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang, a semi-autonomous region of The People's Republic of China. The acclaimed novelist William Boyd described Typhoon as "a wholly compelling and sophisticated spy novel - vivid and disturbing - immaculately researched and full of harrowing contemporary relevance."

In March 2008, Charles Cumming published an interactive online story, The 21 Steps, as part of a Penguin We Tell Stories project. Readers follow the protagonist's travels through Google Maps. Cumming's novels have been translated into six languages. His work is published in the United States by St Martin's Press. In 2009, Cumming left Penguin to join Harper Collins. His fifth novel, The Trinity Six, a thriller about the Cambridge spies, is published in the United States in March 2011.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finest espionage novel ever?, December 24, 2009

By 

Craig McMurtry "Craig" (Redmond, WA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Hidden Man (Paperback)

Charles Cumming's "The Hidden Man" is certainly the finest espionage novel I've read. While I love the works of Littell, Deighton, Greene, McCarry, Ignatius and Le Carre, as well as Cumming's own "A Spy By Nature," "The Hidden Man" is unique in how effectively it deals with the effects of cold war espionage on very ordinary people. The main characters in Cumming's novel are not spies, ambassadors or diplomats, but a businessman and an artist. Nor does Cumming succumb to having them turn into James Bond. History simply reaches into their lives, and unravels them. Even one is not interested in that particular theme, one will be treated to a fast, engrossing drama. By page fifty, Cumming has amassed so much intruiging plot with remarkably little prose.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Multiple layers of intrigue, November 4, 2010

By 

TChris (Tzer Island) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Hidden Man (Paperback)

As of this writing, there are thirty customer reviews of Charles Cumming's first novel, A Spy by Nature, but only one of his second novel, The Hidden Man. This is unfortunate because The Hidden Man is the better of the two books. Readers who enjoy well written, character-driven espionage fiction should seek it out.

When Christopher Keen's two children were young, Keen abandoned his family to take a job as an SIS operative. Thirty years later, Keen works for Divisar Corporate Intelligence. His wife is long dead. Keen has reestablished a relationship with his son Mark, but his son Ben refuses to speak to him. Mark is a senior executive at Libra, a nightclub chain that is about to open a club in Russia. The lawyer putting that deal together is under investigation by MI5, in cooperation with Russian police authorities who observed his meetings with an organized crime figure during trips to Russia. Keen has given professional advice to Libra about its Russian business dealings, and MI5 not only wants Keen's assistance, it wants to use him to get information from Mark. Hours after Keen has his first serious conversation with Mark since leaving the family, a Russian with an apparent score to settle enters Keen's flat and kills him. (The killing is actually the first event in the novel; the early chapters fill in the backstory.)

The bulk of the story centers on the sometimes independent, sometimes cooperative efforts of Mark and Ben to learn who killed their father and why. Cumming builds suspense slowly as we learn about each brother: Mark's enthusiastic but naive willingness to assist MI5; Ben's curiosity about a father he's so long detested; Ben's shaky relationship with a wife who finds herself attracted to his boss. Cumming creates a strong sense of atmosphere and danger as the plot develops; a particularly tense scene has the brothers meeting with Latvian gangsters in a strip club. Each brother is a fully developed character; their very different relationships with their father, and their reactions to conflicting stories they hear about him after his death, is fascinating. A turf war between intelligence agencies working at cross-purposes has become standard fare in spy novels, but it's used to great effect in The Hidden Man. The brothers are caught in the middle, they don't know who or what to believe ... it's a great story.

The careful plot, the depth of the characters, and the nice pace at which the story unfolds all make this an excellent, rewarding, five star novel.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment, January 23, 2012

By 

Stoney (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Hidden Man (Paperback)

In this book Mark and Ben Keene become involved in the investigation of their father's murder, mostly in England, but in the world of nightclubs and the Russian mob. This is the third Charles Cumming book I've read. While I found The Spanish Game to be good, and Trinity 6 to be very good, I was very disappointed by "The Hidden Man".

The Hidden Man starts off slowly with a large cast of poorly identified and imminently forgetable characters, and really doesn't improve from there. I did not find a single character remotely interesting (except possibly Christopher Keene who is murdered a few pages into the book). The book is very idiosyncratic British, and the audiobook is narated in a particularly annoying British accent. Several British intelligence/security/law enforcement agencies are involved (mostly at cross purposes) but I never figured out which ones or why they were involved. Even most American authors have learned to at least identify-in-context obscure American intelligence/security agencies, but Cummings doesn't bother. Well actually there is an exception, Cummings does have a character explain that "the cousins" means the CIA. Duh! There is no satisfying resolution, in part because there are no clear "good guys" or "bad guys". Having read the whole book, I still don't know why Christopher Keene was murdered, nor why any of the action happened, and I couldn't care less. I find Cumming's recurring theme of adultery to be depressing.

In short, I found "The Hidden Man" to tedious and depressing. Readers who are into the dreary "realistic school" of crime/espionage (in which everything is ultimately pointless, all are betrayed, all are disillutioned, and all die pathetic, meaningless deaths) may enjoy it.

If like me, even at 62, you believe that life is a great and exciting adventure, and that each of us is (or should be) contributing to a brighter future for humanity, then you too will probably be disappointed with "The Hidden Man".