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A Spy by Nature: A Novel
A Spy by Nature: A Novel
A Spy by Nature: A Novel
Audiobook11 hours

A Spy by Nature: A Novel

Written by Charles Cumming

Narrated by Simon Vance

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

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 Carre 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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 28, 2007
ISBN9781400175178
Author

Charles Cumming

Charles Cumming was born in Scotland in 1971. In the summer of 1995, he was approached for recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A year later he moved to Montreal where he began working on a novel based on his experiences with MI6, and A Spy by Nature was published in the UK in 2001. In 2012, Charles won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller and the Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year for A Foreign Country. A Divided Spy is his eighth novel.

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Reviews for A Spy by Nature

Rating: 3.5454545454545454 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

22 ratings11 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not at all bad. Alec Milius fails in his interview by MI6 but gets employed for a special assignment... There are elements which don't really stack up, and it is certainly not Le Carre. But a decent and fairly intelligently written book. Worth reading another by this author,
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book is in three parts: 1995 the main character is invited to apply for SIS and sits a variety of exams and interviews; 1996 he is given a job at the London offices of an oil firm with a particular brief and the possibility of a job with MI5 at the end of it; 1997 the plot unravels and he gets called in, against the backdrop of Blair's first election. There are unanswered questions at each stage of the plot development. As it's written in the first person we only know as much as the protagonist knows, however after reading a detailed account of the rigorous selection procedure five candidates undergo it is frustrating not to learn anything more about them or how their performances were evaluated. There are references to training received before being deployed, which would have been interesting to learn about but this is skipped over, presumably the author is not at liberty to divulge anything he knows about that. It is not entirely convincing why the central character behaves the way he does in the second half of the novel, particularly as he is fully aware of the consequences, and he seems far too knowledgeable on affairs of the secret services for a rookie on his first mission.However the book is well written and the author is an astute observer of the details of human interaction, the personas that people use and the power play in every conversation. This may not be a gripping page turner but the scene is sufficiently well set to make you want to know how it turns out. The overiding message is that the reality of espionage is a far cry from the glamorous adventure portrayed in other spy fiction, rather it is a grubby life of lying, cheating and stealing to support the national business interest.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very entertaining and utterly plausible novel.The protagonist is Alec Milius, a recent graduate stuck in a job that he despises and suffering from a resentment that the world owes him rather more respect than he has been given so far.. Visiting his mother one weekend he is approached by a man whom he has never met before who had a vague connection of his late father. It transpires that this man acts as a "spotter" for MI6, looking for potential recruits for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). After attending an initial interview Milius is encouraged to apply for a special sitting of the Civil Service Selection Board (the dreaded CSSB - termed "Sisby" throughout the book). This is described in fascinating detail, and seems desperately gruelling, though his experiences there are as nothing to the trials he will subsequently undergo.Milius is an intriguing character- not particularly likeable, but somehow one does end up on his side.I look forward to reading the other books in the series.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Cumming writes good spy books. This isn't one of his best.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I thought maybe I wasn't in the mood for a spy novel because I didn't care very much for this book. I certainly wouldn't agree with the review from The Observer that was quoted on the back cover "The best of the new generation...taking over where Le Carre and Deighton left off." I've read lots of Le Carre and I was never bored as I was with this book. Or maybe, I thought, now that there is no Cold War the stakes for espionage don't lend themselves to as gripping a story. But then I thought of Le Carre's books written since the fall of the Berlin Wall, like The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener, and I decided that couldn't be the reason. Finally I looked at some of the other online reviews and decided that this book just was not well written. Alec Milius is a twenty something graduate of the London School of Economics employed selling advertising to eastern European businesses in a directory which is mostly bogus. Then a family friend arranges for him to be tested for MI6 but Alec cannot resist lying about his relationship with his ex-girlfriend and he gets caught out. So he is not accepted for the British spy agency but his father's friend comes through with a job working for an oil company. The job has a hidden agenda which is to befriend an American couple who work for a rival oil firm. Alec is supposed to pretend to agree to provide them with information from his company and then he will give them false information. Even though Alec has not seen his ex-girlfriend in over a year he lies to the Americans and tells them he sees her occasionally. This comes to have tragic consequences. Some of the devices used in the book don't really make sense to me. For instance, why did Alec have to have his friend Saul at the party where he was introduced to the Americans? And why did he have to go in on a Saturday to copy the papers he was leaving in his first drop? And why did the last drop have to be at a lawyer's office at midnight? I know they had to get the office mate, Harry Cohen, to be suspicious of Alec but is it likely Harry would go off for 3 weeks after confronting Alec? It just didn't add up and the story was not "heart-racingly tense" as promised on the back cover.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The writing was well done and interesting. I was expecting much more action so I was disappointed that it wasn't very thrilling. The ending seemed abrupt and unfinished.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I almost never re-read a book, but as I have acquired the rest of the series, I thought I needed to go back to the start. I enjoyed this 9 years ago and I enjoyed it again. I will need to rad "The Spanish Game" soon, because I cannot imagine how our hero (?) Alec Milius can begin to rehabilitate himself after this one. Like any good spy book, there are echoes of Le Carre, but that is no bad thing. Taut plotting and crisp dialogue make this an excellent read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Milius is stuck in a dead end job. He had been hoping for better things having graduated from the London School of Economics, but is getting bored in a dead end job. When a family friend offers him the opportunity to work for MI6 he jumps at the chance and starts the arduous selection process. He is not quite up to the standard, so does not make it through, so the same family friend finds him another position with a British oil company who have extensive interests in the Caspian. It is suggested, that whilst he is there, perhaps he can make friends with two people, Fortner Grice and Katharine Simmat, who work at a rival oil firm called Andromeda. The implication is that if he succeeds at this spot of industrial espionage, then he might have a second chance at SIS. This cut throat business is where Milius finds himself a pawn in the smoke and mirrored world of spies as the so called friendly powers play for strategic interests in the region, and even lives are considered worthless.

    This is the second of Cumming’s books that I have read. It is a gripping thriller, with a plausible plot and several twists. Milius, the main character, has some major character flaws, to add to the plot, and his vanity means that he likes the allure of spying but fails to excel at it. It was quite enjoyable overall, the writing is fast paced and he successfully manages to make you not have any affinity with the main character. However, it wasn’t quite as good as Trinity Six, which was superb. It does make you think about who is your enemy though.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very detailed, slow moving book. Only towards the end did it catch me by surprise and reeled me in. The writing style certainly is a matter of taste.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I think I'm gonna have to swim against the tide here. Or at least against the tide of (what are quite possibly reviews for the hardback version) reviews on the cover and inside of my paperback.

    Far from "Eerily good" or "wonderfully assured, tautly written, cleverly plotted", I found this really struggling to make 'so-so'. For me, as well as The Kinks, it's 'a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook up' mess.

    It starts out alright, with the main man Alec Milius being recommended for a job with the Intelligence services. He then finds work with an oil company exploring out somewhere and is involved trying to sweet-talk his American rivals, who also may be more than they seem. Both sides are playing at something they aren't and I think both sides know it. It's just that it goes on and on and on and on in the central part of the novel. I kept thinking "enough already, he's taking the bait, he's going to take the bait, let's get to what the cover says are the "gripping" bit(s)." But they never came. What we do get a lot of are unnecessary details and what I presume are the author's opinions on everything from New Zealand bar staff, to FHM, The Times, the Civil Service, cooking ravioli 'pillows' , and a lot more stuff and nonsense really way too mundane to bother with. A few pages of that and a few lines covering the rest would have done. Then on to the cloak and dagger stuff. But no. Problem is, when I'm seemingly through this middle bit and it looks like we might be getting back to, or down to the nub of it, I've forgotten what the original set-up was. Or if there was one. I can't remember now just exactly who he's supposedly working for and why. Or if there ever was a why. Or who.

    Then the final part, where he is really finding out how it is to be a spy, well it read well at the time. However, on reflection and in the cold light of day, it is all a bit of a damp squib. Not really worth wading through all that went before to get to. I thought of one particular plot twist that could have been worked in at the end that really would have upset the whole apple cart and sent me scurrying back to re-read the previous hours of wining and dining. It would have fitted with a lot of the personal trauma Alec Milius is going through right from when we first meet him. But it wasn't to be…though, maybe Charles Cumming is being really fiendish here and my idea (which could be his, of course) will come out in later books? There seems to be at least two more with Alec Milius as hero, maybe more, so maybe it's for me to read more and find out? Milius will need to sharpen his act up a hell of a lot though.

    After reading and thoroughly enjoying 'The Trinity Six', I really expected a lot more from 'A Spy By Nature'. But I got a lot less. Less plot, less suspense and tension and less of a story. The only more I got, was more fill, padding and 'flannel' - as an old boss of mine used to say. I think this is essentially a short story padded out to 500-odd pages. A back of an envelope plot stretched to breaking point. And beyond. And then some.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Spy by Nature was just OK.... writing was fine, section related to the vetting process for MI6 was interesting, but the rest was pretty predictable. The thing that bothered me the most about this book was the disparity between the supposed high intelligence level of the main character and the bone-headed mistakes and mis-steps he makes throughout the story.

    I've read later Cumming novels and they're much better from a story standpoint.