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The Spanish Game | 
| Author: Charles Cumming
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £5.99
You Save: £2.00 (25%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 21383
Media: Paperback
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 014101783X
EAN: 9780141017839
ASIN: 014101783X
Publication Date: January 25, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Agree April 14, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
This i my favorite book by the author, i agree with below that he has matured.
Can't wait for the next book in June.
Almost perfect October 23, 2007
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
I think this is the strongest novel Charles Cumming has produced to date. He has matured quite a bit since his first novel, A Spy By Nature. It was a good decision to re-visit the main character from the first novel, Alec Milius, who is now in exile in Madrid, working for a British finance company. He fills his time having an affair with his boss's wife, and being paranoid that enemies from his previous life in Britain working for MI5 are still out to get him. His counter-surveillance measures he carries out partly out of necessity, but also partly because he enjoys the secret life, and hasn't been able to let go of it.
The setting in Madrid is good, a refreshing break from the previous two novels set in London. Alec Milius is asked to explore the possibility of his finance company investing in Basque country, and in the course of various meetings, he spends an evening with a former Basque activist and politician. They get on, and agree to meet up at a later date. But on his way to meet Alec, the politician disappears. Suspecting foul play, Alec cannot help himself but investigate, and in doing so, he gets drawn into Basque politics, ETA, and back into the murky world of espionage.
It's not a perfect thriller, but it's an improvement on his first two novels. The plotting is smoother and more effective. Unlike other reviewers, I would argue that ending is not that good - for me it was a contrivance too far. I couldn't fault anything up to that point. This is mostly because Alex Milius is such a convincing, fascinating creation. Charles Cumming makes a passing reference in the novel to The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, which is a fair comparison. Both Ripley and Milius have tremendous talents, but also the seeds of their own destruction within their character flaws. The espionage theme suggests more Le Carre than Highsmith, and again, I don't think it's an unfair comparison to Le Carre. Good espionage writers understand that the interest is not as much in the plot as in the characters - the kind of people who can carry out ethically dubious activities for a perceived higher cause are by their nature, flawed. This is what fascinates the reader, not which country is plotting against who, how and with what fancy gadgetry.
I can only hope that Alec Milius returns in a new novel, but I think that Charles Cumming was right to let him have a break between novels. Aside from the ending, this is a near perfect espionage thriller.
Super book March 19, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There is a line late on in this book where our hero muses that "my life has become a Rubik's cube which is simply impossible to solve" and certainly there are enough twists and turns in The Spanish Game to make even Dan Brown blink, but this is such an intelligent book that the plot never feels false. And Alec Milius is a great protagonist. He has enough natural talents to get into and out of hair-raising situations in a believable fashion but is suffiently hapless for the reader to identify.Charles Cumming seems to have a "voice" all of his own (so my reference to Dan Brown wasn't ment to imply any comparison) and if this is what he is writing in just his third book he should have a terrific future. He certainly has the feel of a star in the making. I believe that Spanish Game marks the end of the "trilogy" and that the author's next book is a stand-alone set in China. I am already eagerly waiting for that one.
 Disappointed March 18, 2006
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I fully expected to be enthralled by this book. The detail is remarkable - but sometimes intrusive. I felt that the plot moved too slowly at the beginning. The author seems more interested in creating local atmosphere - which he does magnificently - than in telling a gripping story. It is not a book I will read again - and one that, sadly, I have already given away - something I rarely do with hardbacks.
FRESHNESS ON EVERY PAGE AND PARAGRAPH February 28, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Alex Milius is tall, lonely and obsessed with his past having loused up his earlier career with S.I.S. Living and working now in Spain as a so called investment banker he cannot help himself from being pulled back into the dirty world of spying, which confirms the title of Cumming's first novel 'A SPY BY NATURE' His ability to write a full length spy thriller in the first person present is nothing short of brilliant, but what crowns this masterpiece of modern story telling is the fresh flow of prose on every page. Repetition, so often the bane of lesser writers never once occurs in phrase or expression.
With an intense depth of research, the pages turn themselves effortlessly right up to the finish, leaving the reader slightly breathless and deprived of further enjoyment. Cumming's dedicatees will be deservedly proud of their selection.
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