Typhoon A Novel

Typhoon, a New York TimesNotable Book of the Year a Top Ten Thriller of the Year ( London Times), further confirms what all the critics around the world have been saying: Charles Cumming is a modern master of the classic espionage thriller, heir to le Carre and Deighton. In 1997, a few months before the British government is scheduled to return Hong Kong to Chinese rule, Joe Lennox, a brilliant young operative for SIS (MI6), loses both his girlfriend and his first high profile asset a prominent defector who disappears from a safe house. The girlfriend, the ravishing Isabella Aubert, he lost to Miles Coolidge, a hard-bitten CIA agent; the asset to collusion between his bosses and the CIA. A decade later, Lennox is back in China, facing his old nemeses. With the CIA plotting to use an Islamic group to destablize China, the SIS seeking to thwart them and his old asset the key to all of this, Lennox, Coolidge, and the girlfriend they shared are hopelessly intertwined in a plot where trust is impossible and truth is unknowable.

CHARLES CUMMING is the author of  the international bestselling thrillers A Spy by Nature and The Spanish Game, as well as the forthcoming The Trinity Six. He is a contributing editor of The Week and currently lives in London.  

Typhoon is easy to like. The plot is tight and complex, and the local details are accurate about the three main cities where it is set: Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing."—James Fallows, The New York Times Book Review  "In the tradition of old-school espionage fiction, Cumming lets character rather than plot carry this compelling thriller. William Lasker, a second-string agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service, takes on the job of writing a book about a rogue CIA plot against the People's Republic of China. The action, which takes place mainly in Hong Kong and Shanghai, focuses on Joe Lennox, an SIS undercover agent in China, and an older CIA veteran, Miles Coolidge. Several months before the turnover of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, a defector, Professor Wang Kaixuan, climbs out of the South China Sea and announces he has important secret information. After the professor disappears, Joe slowly learns the defector has become part of Typhoon, a secret CIA plan being run by Miles whose aim is to destabilize China. The conflict between Joe and Miles, both personal and professional, fuels this complex and satisfying novel."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)