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JUDAS 62: The gripping new spy action thriller featuring BOX 88 from the master of the 21st century spy novel (BOX 88, Book 2)

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This was a fascinating experience for the young Lachlan Kite, yet without the assistance of Aranov he may as well have been walking alone in a dense forest without purpose. He uses Aranov as bait to compromise Mikhail Gromik, the Russian intelligence officer who caused Kite problems in 1993 and who is also at the centre of the Judas List terminations. They succeed, but the escape is a harrowing one and on their tail the entire time is a brutal and very suspicious member of the KGB/FSK by the name of Gromik.

Compared to the tight storylines in other books by Cumming, this feels like a rough draft in need of an edit. The supporting cast are again pretty well developed/developing, with some very good aspects in play around MI6 operatives and covers.There is a good feel here too for the heat and the pressure, and this operation is short, over a few days, rather than some weeks as in the earlier one. The Judas List comprises of Russian enemies and traitors who are targeted by the FSB for revenge kills usually using nerve agents such as Novichok. It’s firmly set in the context of political upheaval following the fall of Gorbachev and the onset of the presidency of Yeltsin. A strangely stilted book, partly down to the new (slightly wooden) narrator but also through the storytelling.

The fact that you know that the mission is successful slightly diminishes the tension of what would have made a good standalone novel.Here are the classic components of a clever political thriller, with spies, double agents, plot stings and revenge. Note: There is a character index at the beginning of the book, but I found it burdensome to go back and forth while reading a digital version of the book so I had to rely on context clues and memory as to who was who and who was good or bad. Cumming's fifth novel, The Trinity Six, a thriller about the discovery of a sixth member of the Cambridge spies ring, was published in 2011. The former Russian FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned with polonium-210 in London had been listed as JUDAS 47.

The Dubai mission is indeed the deadliest game of cat-and-mouse the seasoned Kite has ever played and it will take all his guile and expertise to have a successful mission and get both he and Aranov out alive.I haven’t read all of Cumming’s novels, I enjoyed his Thomas Kell Spy Thriller series, particularly ‘A Colder War’ and his take on the Cambridge spy-ring in ‘The Trinity Six’, as well as Box 88, but I think Judas 62 is best I’ve read so far. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

In the aftermath of the recent assassination of a retired Russian exile in the US, Lachlan Kite, head of spy organisation Box 88, finds his own name, in the form of an alias he used in 1993, on the up-to-date Judas List at position 62. There would be ‘collateral damage’ along the way and young Lachlan Kite would somehow have to get used to it. The first novel in this series, Box 88, saw the introduction of Lachlan Kite and his recruitment into the joint MI6/CIA organisation known as Box 88.Kite's fight for survival takes him to Dubai, where he must confront the Russian secret state head on.

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