Kennedy 35

by Charles Cumming

Overview

A Financial Times Best Thriller of 2023

Veteran agent Lachlan Kite—“a spy for the 21st century” (Daily Mail)—reckons with the fallout from a mission in Senegal carried out early in his career.

1995: In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, 24-year-old spy Lachlan Kite and his girlfriend, Martha Raine, are sent to Senegal on the trail of a hunted war criminal. The mission threatens to spiral out of control, forcing Kite to make choices which will have devastating consequences not only for his career at top-secret intelligence agency BOX 88, but also for his relationship with Martha.

2023: Eric Appiah, an old friend from Kite’s days at school and an off-the-record BOX 88 asset, makes contact with explosive information about what happened all those years ago in West Africa. When tragedy strikes, Kite must use all the resources at his disposal to protect Martha from a criminal network with links to international terror.

Charles Cumming once again straddles two timelines to create a high-tension thriller in this latest Lachlan Kite novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613164556
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Series:	Box 88 , #3
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	344,035
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

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 Honors in English Literature. He had been described as "the best of the new generation of British spy writers who are taking over where John le Carré and Len Deighton left off."

Editorial Reviews

10/16/2023

Bestseller Cumming adeptly intertwines spy missions past and present for this taut third entry in his BOX 88 series (following 2022’s Judas 62). In 1995, Lachlan “Lockie” Kite is still a fledgling agent with BOX 88, an ultra-secret Anglo-American covert ops collective. His latest assignment is to bring to justice Augustin Bagaza, who’s responsible for thousands of Tutsi deaths in the Rwandan genocide and is currently living in Senegal. Kite heads to Senegal under cover of an ostensible backpacking vacation with his girlfriend, Martha. When Martha falls ill, Kite contacts an old college friend, Eric Appiah, to take her into his home and care for her while the BOX team abducts Bagaza and his accomplice/mistress, Grace Mavinga. The plan goes awry, and Kite barely escapes alive. Twenty-eight years later, Eric warns Kite that investigative journalist Lucian Michael Cablean has information on the failed operation that could endanger Kite, Martha, and the existence of BOX 88 itself. Meanwhile Mavinga, who’s become a heavyweight figure in international money laundering and terrorist financing networks, seeks revenge on all involved. Cumming masterfully orchestrates suspense as the characters’ pasts come to bear on their present, and while the ending is fairly abrupt, it promises a breakneck start for the inevitable sequel. This espionage tale grips from the get-go. Agent: Luke Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"A compelling exploration of the consequences of realpolitik and the intermingling of the personal with the political."

The Guardian

"A spy novel that reads like a high-octane thriller"

BookReporter Weekly on JUDAS 62

"As is true in real life, time is not linear and Kite carries the past with him into the present not as history but as living fact…. KENNEDY 35 is an engrossing glimpse into a future where we all may have to come to terms with what we have done."

Reviewing the Evidence

"Cumming marshals his twin time frames expertly and illuminates an awful chapter in recent history. A first-rate spy thriller."

The Mail on Sunday

"This remains one of the finest espionage series going, and KENNEDY 35 never disappoints. Charles Cumming has a great eye for historical detail, which he mixes in seamlessly with all the action to create outstanding thrillers that are not to be missed."

BookReporter

"Enthralling, haunting … Cumming is often compared to John le Carré, but he is his own man—taking the spy thriller to a new level of storytelling, one that illuminates the darkest corners of our modern world."

Financial Times

2023-08-26
A veteran secret agent tracks Rwandan war criminals.

A preliminary "Note on the Rwandan Genocide," chilling in its dispassionate description of horrifying events, summarizes the ghastly events of 1994. The novel proper opens a year later, as veteran CIA officer Michael Strawson and French war reporter Philippe Vauban discuss the tragic aftermath and the outrageous fact that the engineer of the carnage, Augustin Bagaza, “the butcher of Kigali,” is living in Dakar in comfort at 35 Rue Kennedy with “his Congolese whore.” Flash forward to Paris, 2022: MI6 is on the trail of this woman, whom they call “Lady Macbeth.” In the succeeding chapter, “The present day,” Senegalese businessman Eric Appiah is tracking down his old friend, veteran spy Lachlan Kite, who worked under Strawson. Hearing Appiah use the diminutive “Lockie” convinces gallery owner Robin Whitaker to contact his secretive friend on Appiah’s behalf. Appiah’s contact with Kite, who has now married Isobel, a doctor who’s borne him a young daughter, takes Kite and the reader back to the mid-1990s and his initial pursuit of Bagaza and Lady Macbeth with his then-girlfriend, Martha Raine, in tow. As the plot moves again into the present, the search to find and protect Martha provides an engine. Steeped in recent history, Cumming’s third Box 88 novel depicts the international complexities of modern espionage as well as the inseparable intertwining of the political and the personal. Like le Carré and Lawton before him, Cumming is building a modern history through an espionage lens, book by methodical book.

An intricate espionage thriller that’s both timely and convincing.

Kirkus Reviews