Cumming, Charles: A Spy By Nature

St. Martin's Griffin, 368 pages
1st published: 2007

Twenty-something Alec Milius is smart and heart-broken and headed nowhere in particular when a chance encounter leads him to interview with MI6. He winds up becoming an industrial spy, a life to which he's particularly suited--see the book's title--because he is naturally deceitful: he tends to fall into lying even when there's no particular reason to do so. The trait is handy in the spy business, if deadly for personal relationships. Admirably, the author takes his time with the story. The first 25% of the book details Alec's interviews with MI6--not a lot going on and yet it manages to be gripping. The narrative slows in the middle, when Alec is playing a cat-and-mouse game with an American couple: lots of talk as he attempts to manipulate them, and vice versa, and it can be tedious. Still, the detailed accounts of conversations, related by Alec in the first person, contribute to the book feeling very realistic and intimate. My biggest complaint about the novel is that Cumming's Americans are forever dropping their G's: they're doin' things and goin' places. I assume this was an attempt to differentiate them as Americans, but it isn't accurate and it was like nails on a chalkboard every time I read it. I'm glad to see that Alec Milius returns in Cumming's 2008 novel The Spanish Game. I just hope there aren't too many Americans in it!