ICARUS 17 by Charles Cumming

Charles Cumming talks to Paul Burke about his new novel Icarus 17, latest in the Box 88 series, The Day of the Jackal, A Spy by Nature, Thomas Kell, Geopolitics in the novel, post-Cold War spy fiction dip, touring Eastern Europe before The Wall fell, Plane and not meeting Jason Statham. Icarus 17: As director of covert intelligence agency Box 88, Lachlan Kite is at the apex of his espionage career. But when Martha Raine – a woman he hasn’t seen in twenty years – begs for his help, Kite finds himself back in the game, racing to avert disaster. Kite must find Martha’s son, Max, who vanished in Athens with his girlfriend, Yasmine. But the couple aren’t just missing, they’re running for their lives. Two rival agencies are hunting them, both with orders to kill on sight. Max and Yasmine are carrying a dizzying secret, one which could pull apart the foundations of the Middle East for a generation. If Kite fails to save them, the costs – both personal and professional – will be catastrophic. Charles Cumming is a British writer of spy fiction. Educated at Eton and the University of Edinburgh where he graduatednwith 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, came out in 2003. The Spanish Game, 2006, Typhoon, 2008, The Trinity Six, 2011. A Foreign Country, 2012, was named the first Scottish Crime Book of the Year at the inaugural Bloody Scotland Festival in Stirling in September 2012. It also won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for the best thriller of 2012. A Colder War, 2014. A Divided Spy, 2016. The Man Between (published in the US as 'The Moroccan Girl') was published in 2018. In 2020 Cumming released BOX 88, followed by JUDAS 62 (2021), KENNEDY 35 (2023) and ICARUS 17 (2026). Charles Cumming was also the screenwriter of the Gerard Butler action movie 'Plane' and was part of the writing team responsible for the first season of the hit TV series 'The Day of the Jackal. Recommended: Bruce Chatwin, Martin Amis, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Henry Porter, David McCloskey. Ian Fleming and Frame 37 both by Nicholas Shakespeare, The Peacock and the Sparrow IS Berry, The Bureau, The Agency. Paul Burke is the editor of Aspects of Crime and the presenter of Spymasters. His first book Spies on Screen will be published this year. Icarus 17: Lachlan Kite should have left fieldwork behind by now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices