Book review: The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming

Published on Monday 24 January 2011 13:21

The Trinity Six Charles Cumming (Harper Collins. 406pp, £12.99)

Begin with the title. It refers to the Cambridge spies - Burgess, Maclean & Co - who were all, according to Charles Cumming, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. This is a mistake. Donald Maclean went to Trinity Hall, next door but a different college. Charles Cumming (Eton and Edinburgh University) may be excused his mistake. However, when, 60 or so pages into the novel, his hero, Dr Sam Gaddis, who teaches Russian history at University College, London, consults the relevant Foreign Office lists, and apparently finds that both Burgess and Maclean were at Trinity Hall, one cannot help thinking that a reputable publisher like Harper Collins should have an editor who can distinguish between the two colleges. Still, Cumming writes with such brio that one forgives his carelessness.

Only five Cambridge spies were identified, but there have always been rumours of a sixth and seventh, and when Gaddis is given what seems a lead which will enable him to name the sixth man, he thinks he has the makings of a bestseller, something he badly needs on account of being heavily in debt. (All the same he seems to have a remarkably indulgent bank which grants him yet another loan to enable him to draw money almost at will from cash machines and to live quite high for a university lecturer.) The alert reader will, however, soon suspect that the sixth man may be a red herring and that there is a far more important and up-to-date secret to be revealed. This is partly because Russian agents are wandering around London murdering with apparent impunity, partly because of the shady behaviour of the head of MI6, but principally because, from the first, we suspect that it may in some way involve the autocratic Russian president, Sergei Platov, whose biography Gaddis has written. Platov is very evidently Vladimir Putin, barely disguised by the alias..

The plot is complicated, taking Gaddis to Moscow, Berlin, Vienna and Hungary, and it would be ridiculous to try to summarise it. But this is a plot-driven novel, none of the characters having much individuality. The narrative moves fast (after some early slow passages) and is put together efficiently. The book is what publishers want: a page-turner. A reviewer of one of Cumming's earlier novels suggested he owed a debt to Le Carr rather than Ian Fleming, but despite the intricate plot, he is much more straightforward than Le Carr, and, for all the betrayals and duplicity, there is little of the Master's atmosphere of moral unease. .

That said, Cumming depicts a world which, one fears, is all too true, one in which privacy is now scarcely possible.Within a few days of being ordered to investigate Gaddis, Tanya, a junior officer in MI6, has learned almost all there is to know about his private life, bank accounts, health, habits, etc. "But it was Gaddis's more recent internet traffic which was of most interest to the Secret Intelligence Service. A URL history obtained from a source at AOL was alarming in its scope and intensity". This is all depressingly convincing. We live in a world, Cumming assures us, in which our mobile phone records reveal our whereabouts at any moment, and where our most intimate conversations may be recorded. Even a call Gaddis makes from a public phone box to New Zealand will be logged. Fortunately, as it turns out, the beautiful Tanya is one of the good guys.

She is also remarkably efficient. When Gaddis becomes involved in shootings, first in Berlin and then in Vienna, she organises his escape with a speed and smoothness, which, if characteristic of our secret services, must be reassuring. Admittedly, the ease with which she extricates our hero from perilous situations may seem improbable. This scarcely matters. Cumming has a nice sense of place - his Berlin and Vienna are very good, his Budapest even better - and he carries off the improbable with the audacity of those past-masters of this sort of novel, John Buchan and Dornford Yates. He shares their ability to persuade the reader to suspend disbelief and read on eagerly. In short, he has written a highly enjoyable slice of higher hokum. It will surely be a great success, just the thing if you were to read it in an airport lounge that would allow you to not to care that your flight had been delayed. What more can you ask for from this sort of novel?

On the other hand I don't think the publishers would be well advised to send a complimentary copy to Mr Putin.