A Spy by Nature: A Novel (Alec Milius) [Hardcover]

Charles Cumming (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2007 | Series: Alec Milius

This is what they told me a long time ago.
Only make contact in the event of an emergency.
Only telephone if you believe that your position has been fatally compromised.
Under no circumstances are you to approach us unless it is absolutely necessary in order to preserve the security of the operation.
This is the number.

Alec Milius is young, smart, and ambitious.  He also has a talent for deception.  He is working in a dead-end job when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, the elite British Secret Intelligence Service, handing him an opportunity to play center-stage in a dangerous game of espionage.

In his new line of work, Alec finds that the difference between the truth and a lie can mean the difference between life and death--and he is having trouble telling them apart.  Isolated and exposed, he must play a role in which the slightest glance or casual remark can seem heavy with unintended menace.  Caught between British and American Intelligence, Alec finds himself threatened and alone, unable to confide in even his closest friend.  His life as a spy begins to exact a terrible price, both on himself and on those around him.

Richly atmospheric and chillingly plausible, A Spy By Nature announces the arrival of British author Charles Cumming as heir apparent to masters like John le Carré and Len Deighton.  A bestseller in England, it's the gripping story of a young man driven by ruthless ambition who finds himself chasing not just success, but survival.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Loosely based on the author's real-life experience of having been recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in 1995, Cumming's supremely intelligent and utterly readable debut will delight fans of such British masters of spy fiction as John le Carré, Robert Ludlum and Len Deighton. Alec Milius, a 24-year-old marketing consultant for a tiny London company that solicits business people in central and eastern Europe to advertise in a dubious publication called Central European Business Review, welcomes the chance to join the SIS, which after an exhausting selection process places him as a support agent with a British oil company. Alec initially thrives in his new job, but as he becomes increasingly entangled in his mission, he begins to face unexpected dangers as well as the loss of his identity. Smartly paced and intricately plotted, Cumming's decidedly unglamorous look at industrial espionage provides plenty of elaborate deceits, double crosses and other trappings of a first-class spy thriller. (July)
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From Booklist

Industrial espionage is where aging cold warriors go to die and where silly, young twits with illusions of grandeur go to feel like contenders. Alec Milius is one of the twits; when he is turned down for Britain's SIS, he lands with a quasi-rogue offshoot whose mission is to steal secrets from an American oil company. It all seems glamorous enough at first, albeit without any Bondish derring-do, or even much le Carré tradecraft, but gradually the dirt comes to the surface, and young Alec has been reduced to a piece of detritus floating in an ocean of hazardous waste. Cumming, who survived a tour with the SIS in the 1990s, appears to speak with authority, and he certainly amasses a convincing arrary of details to support his view of industrial espionage as a soul-destroying exercise in postmodern absurdity. Although he never quite succeeds in making his twit-hero altogether sympathetic, he comes remarkably close: poor Alec Milius gets sucker punched just like Alec Leamus in le Carré's Spy Who Came In from the Cold, but the more gullible the sucker, the less we feel the punch. Ott, Bill

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (July 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312366353
• ISBN-13: 978-0312366353
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #449,751 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

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Many will find a refreshing change of pace from traditional spy thrillers, January 18, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Spy by Nature: A Novel (Alec Milius) (Hardcover)

George Bernard Shaw's famous observation that "The British and the Americans are two people separated by a common language" serves also to explain some important distinctions that American readers will find in the British mystery novel A SPY BY NATURE. In addition to the common language that separates the two nations, Charles Cumming's book reminds us of differences in philosophy and plot between the writing styles of many American and English authors. In the mystery field, American writers tend toward the physical and the violent. Their English counterparts seem a little more understated and less likely to resort to fisticuffs and mayhem. Although lacking almost any violence, A SPY BY NATURE nevertheless is an absorbing novel of the modern world of espionage. Its plot twists and double-dealing characters will have readers shaking their heads in wonder.

The story is semi-autobiographical as Cumming himself served for a period of time in England's MI6, a branch of their intelligence service. Indeed, the first 100 pages of the book serve as a primer for how one is recruited, interviewed and considered for service with British Intelligence. This description is detailed, tedious and sadly quite boring. However, these pages do introduce us to Alec Milius, the unsuccessful MI6 candidate whose rejection serves as the stepping-off point for the final two-thirds of the novel, which easily compensates for the tedium of the first third.

Alec Milius is certainly no James Bond. It's hard to characterize Milius as a hero in this novel. He is a pathological liar who apparently would lie even when the truth would better serve his purpose. Although deemed unqualified for MI6, he is recruited for industrial espionage. In the course of that action, the reader is introduced to many deftly portrayed characters, including the American couple who Milius must befriend in order to ultimately betray. The story is both understated and complex, and the conclusion will leave audiences with just enough unanswered questions to await Milius's return.

Reading A SPY BY NATURE requires effort by the reader, similar to a John le Carre or Graham Greene mystery. This is not meant to compare Cumming to either of these great writers. But this is not the kind of thriller in which harrowing escape and violent confrontation stimulate the reader from chapter to chapter, and the confrontation is not simply between good and evil. Instead, there are moral shades that make distinguishing between those two extremes much more difficult. Still, A SPY BY NATURE is a thoughtful and well-written mystery that many will find a refreshing change of pace from traditional spy thrillers.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "...we are all of us foolishly reliant on the goodwill of corrupt men for our safety and peace of mind.", July 23, 2007

By 

K. M. "literary devotee" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Spy by Nature: A Novel (Alec Milius) (Hardcover)

British subject Alec Milius is young, cocky, and unwilling to live his life "suspended between brilliance and mediocrity." He wants to make his mark in the world, not let it make its mark on him. Highly competitive and at root actually insecure, Alec sizes up everyone he encounters, testing their perceived weaknesses and attempting to turn them to his advantage. At age 24, he feels he's been handed the short end of the stick because he attended the London School of Economics rather than Oxford or Cambridge, and then fell into a fraudulent telemarketing job. So when an old school friend of his deceased father recommends him as a candidate for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), aka, MI6, he jumps at it.

The first hundred pages of A SPY BY NATURE follow Alec as he navigates through interviews, intelligence tests, and group exercises with four other applicants. Everything is seen through Alec's perspective, including the others whom he meticulously dissects in his mind. He calculates his every move, plotting his contributions to a discussion about international relations as if he were playing chess, declining to evaluate himself for the written record, and choosing, in a one-on-one with a shrink, to lie about his current relationship with his former girlfriend, Kate.

Notified of the selection board's decision, Alec considers it another unfair assessment of his worth, and his state of mind leaves him ripe for recruitment to a lower level espionage operation. Soon, Alec is working "undercover" for an oil company. His mission is to become friendly with an American couple suspected of being industrial spies intent on obtaining strategic oil field data. Alec is confident he can play secret agent with the best of them. But the young man, who overestimates his own abilities and underestimates the stresses and dangers of this one-upmanship between two "allies," soon makes clumsy and unalterable mistakes. Too late, Alec realizes the big boys play for keeps, and he isn't a "big boy"....

The book jacket relates that Charles Cumming, the author of A SPY BY NATURE, went through a vetting process when he was approached by the SIS in 1995. This accounts for the detailed knowledge he exhibits of the "Sisby" (Civil Service Selection Board) which Alec takes. One would hope that the rest of Cumming's skillfully rendered plot is a product of his imagination rather than experience, but, regardless, the author constructs in narrator Alec a character whose self-delusions constrict him like a boa, and a plot that builds suspenseful dread as Alec slides into an untenable situation.

Not only does A SPY BY NATURE probe the requirements for being a "successful" spy, but it offers a fascinating character study of a young man who struggles to live a life filled with meaning, but whose own traits tear away his hopes in both private and professional arenas. This novel unhurriedly progresses through lengthy conversations between Alec and other memorable characters and his private mental ruminating and scheming. This is a cerebral spy story that achieves tragic climax without incorporating overblown action scenes. It's a superb piece of fiction that, aside from invading Alec's psyche, also delivers a keen warning about men (and women) who count on our willingness to rely on their seeming goodwill for our safety and peace of mind. They would not count themselves as corrupt. They would call themselves patriots and masters of fate. But Alec, who in many ways is naturally deceptive and corrupt, learns how fallacious such reliance is. In a contest between Alec and the pros in the shadowy world of espionage, it would appear Alec is destined to again get the short end of the stick....

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A breath of fresh air in the spy genre, October 8, 2007

By 

Jeff Marsick - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Spy by Nature: A Novel (Alec Milius) (Hardcover)

These days so many books are derivatives of 007-styled derring-do with gorgeous femme fatales, ingenious egomaniacal world-crushers, and gadgets gadgets gadgets. Not many delve into the psyche games associated with becoming a spy, how words can be used just as effectively as bullets or torture. In this book, Alec Milius tries out for the British SIS but is rejected. As a consolation prize, he is recruited to work for a British oil company as a corporate spy with the caveat that after 4 or 5 years he can move up to either MI-5 or 6. Being a corporate spy, however, isn't about glamorous locations and caviar and gadgets, Alec discovers. It's about secrecy, spinning webs of deceit, isolating oneself from friends, family, and society in general. And most of all, it's about not getting caught. Charles Cumming makes has Alec do the heavy lifting, giving us a blow-by-blow narrative of the process, which I can't help but feel makes this terrific novel an autobiography of sorts, given that Cumming was recruited by Five back in the day, and worked for them for several years.
The book is intriguing, and while it's certainly not for the action-junkie, it certainly is for the reader who wants to know what goes on in a spy's head, and how they dance when the time comes to do their job. A great insight into the psychological aspect of intelligence and counter-intelligence that is not to be missed.