BOX 88

Written by Charles Cumming

Narrated by Charlie Anson

An organisation that doesn’t exist. A spy that can’t be caught.

Years ago, a spy was born…

1989: The Cold War will soon be over, but for BOX 88, a top secret spying agency, the espionage game is heating up. Lachlan Kite is sent to France to gather intelligence on the Lockerbie bombing. What he uncovers is terrifying…

Now he faces the deadliest decision of his life…

2020: Kite has been taken captive and brutally tortured. He now has a choice: reveal the truth about what happened in France thirty years earlier – or watch his family die.

In a battle unlike anything he has faced before, Kite must use all his skills to stay alive.

’A spy for the 21st century’Daily Mail, Books of the Year

‘Wonderfully taut, exciting and up-to-date’Spectator, Books of the Year

‘An ambitious fusion of coming-of-age novel and gripping espionage thriller’Financial Times, Books of the Year

‘BOX 88 is so good. Charles Cumming is up there with the very best espionage writers’ Ian Rankin

‘A wonderful spy novel; Charles Cumming’s most ambitious – and his best – yet’ Mick Herron

‘Charles Cumming has breathed new life into the spy novel’ Ben Macintyre

‘Atmospheric and full of sharply realised characters’ Sunday Times

‘A clever thriller’ Sun

‘Intelligence, grace, and stunning verisimilitude’ Gregg Hurwitz

‘An engaging hero’ James Swallow

‘All the hallmarks of the finest spy thriller’ Charlotte Philby

‘Sharp-eyed and satisfying’ Henry Porter

‘A great new spy hero is born’ Amanda Craig

‘Ideal for anyone nostalgic for their first love and the whiff of Marlboro Lights’ The Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780008200404

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.

Reviews for BOX 88

[Alice Grix · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The action and suspense was electric. I was convinced it was not a happy ever after ending. I say no more.

[Paul-Michiel Koning · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Exiting, entertaining and refreshing sums up the wat this book feels. Combined with à very comfortable narrating voice, strongly recommended.

[Aj · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable yarn...will definitely seek the next book out. Plausible with perhaps the exception of ' Rambo'....that felt like a bet.

[tatoosh-3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

BOX 88 is listed on bestseller lists and receives high ratings, but I had to struggle to avoid a DNF. So, I trudged through it 50 pages at a time. In a word, it is boring.The book begins with a short four-page introduction focused on the 1988 Bombing of Pan Am 103 near Lockerbie, Scotland, to set the background for the story.In 2020, Iranian spies kidnap Lachlan Kite, a married, middle-aged agent of BOX 88. Previously, they murdered Kite’s boarding school friend, Xavier, and are now intent on extracting information about Kite’s first assignment in 1989. As the story progresses, Kite’s wife is held hostage, and agents of BOX 88 and MI5 attempt to locate and rescue Kite and his wife.Unfortunately, the focus shifts to Kite’s recruitment into BOX 88, his initial training, and his first assignment. Initially, I regarded these shifts as annoying interruptions to introduce Kite’s backstory. It soon became clear that the focus is on Kite’s actions as an 18-year-old recruit and the events that occurred in 1989. Unfortunately, the events of 1989 are not particularly interesting, and Kite’s abduction and the subsequent rescue is little more than a flawed subplot. The motivation for the kidnapping was laughably implausible. Finally, the story ends with a lame cash grab. A minor character introduced early in the book reappears with information blatantly designed to set the stage for a subsequent book. Read Box 88 and any sequels at your own risk.

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I used to really like spy novels - more than detective stories - but you don't see them any more since the end of the cold war. And some of the last ones I've read have been quite ghastly. I usually managed to plough through and finish them if they were well-written even if I think they were dull/irritating/boring, though I would chuck them very fast if they irritated me, but I'm a very fast reader, so the loss of time was less of an issue than with a lot of people. If they were badly written I would stick it out for the first chapter, then dip, if the dips reveal more bad writing, I’d junk 'em. And then I “discovered” a few years ago Charles Cumming’s Spy Fiction. Do tackle the Lachlan Kite round-up as well, “Judas 62”, which I’m planing on reading next. You might find “Box 88” a bit sluggish, but I was enchanted by its melancholy-drenched procedural—by the ways Cumming carefully undermines the ingenuity of his hero’s best efforts. The Kite series is not finished yet but I like to fantasize a final Lachlan Kite book, where Kite is hospice-old, dying as he finishes his scholarship on Alford and picaresque and the Thirty-Years War—modern Europe's First Civil War—, and some young bloods come to him dutifully but, eh, a bit condescendingly, and…It's a bit of a shame Charles Cummings isn't on the list of the best contemporary spy fiction; his spy fiction is glorious and he isn't bored by anything. And it's global. Tunisia one novel, China the next, and Britain next...

[edwardsgt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very different spy story following two parallel timelines, 1989 post Lockerbie terrorist bomb (December 1988) and contemporary. Lachlan, "Lockie" is recruited by one of his public school tutors, after he has taken his A-levels, into a shadowy secret organisation within the British and US security services, "Box 88" in 1989. His first mission is in his summer holidays, staying in the south of France with a schoolfriend's wealthy family. Well described his recruitment, his struggles of conscience spying on friends and his ultimate mastery of spy craft. The parallel plot sees Box 88 being investigated by MI5 agents and Lockie followed. All reads very authentic, as might be expected by an ex security services employee!

[malcrf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent. A right page-turner, with vivid characters, rich prose and a fascinating plot.

[brianewilliams · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Box 88 in the title is the name of an "off-the-books" collaboration between MI6, the CIA and unspecified others (is it the deep state?). Box 88 in the 1980's recruits an 18-year old man to essentially spy on his best friend's family during a summer vacation in the south of France. That is the backstory to the main story that has the same man, now a senior Box 88 operative, kidnapped in London thirty years later and tortured for information about the events of his earlier assignment. Iranians are the nominal baddies in the story, the ones being spied upon by Box 88. The real bad ones are plotting terrorist action against the US and UK.The backstory is the more interesting one: suspenseful with a menacing atmosphere set against the south of France background. It sets the stage for the spy thriller in introducing characters and the Box 88 operation -- the expected sequel to "Box 88" will hopefully improve on the debut.It's a readable spy novel, although not the author's best effort.

[pierthinker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lachlan Kite is a spy working for Box 88, a secret government sanctioned organisation that even MI5 and the CIA know nothing about. He is kidnapped and tortured by his Iranian captors to reveal truths about his first ever spy mission when he was only 18 years old. We learn about Kite’s upbringing and education, how he was recruited and trained by Box 88 and about his mission in detail - helping to gather intelligence on a prominent Iranian while holidaying with the Bonnard family in the south of France.The story of the intelligence mission is well told with plenty of spy stuff jeopardy - tension, confusion, hiding microphones, beautiful women, wonderful locations, trade craft. Although Kite comes across as a bit too mature, there are some good episodes where he is out of his depth and does not fully understand the adult world.The conclusion is a bit formulaic and too pat for me. There are many loose ends left to be covered by future volumes.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Now that John le Carré has signalled that he is unlikely to publish any more novels, the search is on to identify his successor as leader in that literary field. I have always felt that the tendency to describe le Carré as one of the greatest writers of spy fiction rather misses the pojnt - I think he is, quite simply, one of the greatest writers, regardless of genre.There are some strong candidates for the mantle of le Carré’s successor. William Boyd is already acknowledged as one of the finest writers of his, or any other generation, although he does not confine himself solely to the field of espionage. Over the last few years, Charles Cumming has also emerged as a leading aspirant to that title, and this novel will certainly help to strengthen any such claim. Indeed, while reading this novel, I found myself recalling what was perhaps le Carré‘s most autobiographical novel, A Perfect Spy.Like A Perfect Spy, the action moved between a threatening present and various stages in the protagonist’s earlier life. The protagonist in this case is Lachlan Kite, brought up between public school in England (with an uncanny resemblance to Eton) and the hotel in West Scotland run by his mother. Kite finds himself recruited into the intelligence world while still at school, in the late 1980s, Kite is soon exposed to the dilemmas that such a life carries with it, leaving him torn between loyalty to his service or to his friends.That dilemma remains with him throughout his career. As the novel opens, he has apparently left that world, and established himself in business. He is, however, under surveillance by an extensive team of officers from MI5 ... but that is not the only team keeping tabs on him. He suddenly finds himself snatched and taken hostage, and struggling to work out what complex element from his past has come back to haunt him.Cumming balances the twin threads of the current story and the gradually emerging insight into Lachlan’s past very adeptly. As with all of his previous novels, his intelligence officers rely on sound tradecraft, rather than riding on the luxury of technological wizardry, all of which lends to the credibility of the story. His characters are all plausible, too. Lachlan Kite is very empathetic, and convincing. The child in this case is father to the man, and there is a strong consistency between the young Lachlan in 1988, and the character he has become by 2020.A very convincing novel, which makes a strong foundation for what I understand is to become a series.