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 First 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”.
His new novel is
BOX 88.
At CrimeReads Cumming tagged
seven books featuring young spies, including:
A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
Speaking of double agents, they don’t come much more conflicted than poor old Magnus Pym in John le Carré’s A Perfect Spy. The troubled son of a 
conman father who is recruited into British intelligence in his teens, Pym is a simulacrum of le Carré himself. This is the Master’s most autobiographical novel, so much so that it becomes difficult to tell where the author’s personal experience ends and Pym’s begins. Le Carré was always fascinated by betrayal; his famous mole, Bill Hayden in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, was partly modelled on Kim Philby. Yet when offered the chance to talk to Philby himself on a visit to Moscow, le Carré turned the opportunity down. “I refused to meet [him],” he told an interviewer. “To me, Philby was a thoroughly bad lot, just a naturally bent man. I wouldn’t have trusted him with my cat for the weekend.”
Read about
another entry on the list.
A Perfect Spy is among
Nicholas Searle's five top deceivers in fiction,
Ted Koppel's six favorite books,
Ann Patchett's favorite books,
Jonathan Miles's five best books on the secrets of espionage, and
Philip Pullman's forty favorite books.
Ted Scheinman calls it le Carré's greatest novel.
--Marshal Zeringue
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