About the Author

Charles Cumming was born in Scotland in 1971. Author of the bestselling thrillers A Spy by Nature, The Hidden Man and most recently The Spanish Game.

Reviews

Loosely based on the author's real-life experience of having been recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in 1995, Cumming's supremely intelligent and utterly readable debut will delight fans of such British masters of spy fiction as John le Carre, Robert Ludlum and Len Deighton. Alec Milius, a 24-year-old marketing consultant for a tiny London company that solicits business people in central and eastern Europe to advertise in a dubious publication called Central European Business Review, welcomes the chance to join the SIS, which after an exhausting selection process places him as a support agent with a British oil company. Alec initially thrives in his new job, but as he becomes increasingly entangled in his mission, he begins to face unexpected dangers as well as the loss of his identity. Smartly paced and intricately plotted, Cumming's decidedly unglamorous look at industrial espionage provides plenty of elaborate deceits, double crosses and other trappings of a first-class spy thriller. (July) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

A London School of Economics grad who once trained for M16, Alec Milius has a spiffy job with a British oil firm that leads to some very sticky industrial espionage. A best-selling debut in England. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.