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The Hidden Man

Author: Charles Cumming
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

16 reviews
Sales Rank: 14051

Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.4 x 1.1

ISBN: 0140294775
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140294774
ASIN: 0140294775

Publication Date: July 29, 2004
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: We ship daily from the United Kingdom

Also Available In:

•	Paperback - The Hidden Man

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•	A Spy by Nature
•	The Spanish Game
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Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Response to "Womenxtra" July 26, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

Amazon customers might be interested to know that this reviewer (below) gave FIVE STARS to Angels and Demons (huh?), The Da Vinci Code (spare me), the soundtrack from The Bodyguard (enough said) and even the 'Sony Crystal Hard Case Mobile Phone'. (Who reviews a PHONE??)

Maybe she wandered into the wrong neighbourhood... Run back to Kevin Costner and Dan Brown, luv. It's a lot safer there.

1 out of 5 stars

Boring! July 26, 2007
1 out of 5 found this review helpful

I don't usually write harsh comments - but this is a really boring book. thriller? is this what they consider as a thriller book? I am half way through and I honestly cannot be bothered to finish it. Some people here decided this is a good book, please clarify? which bit was good? Maybe I am missing something.

4 out of 5 stars

A decent contemporary thriller July 12, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I don't think this is a great thriller, but there's enough about it to make it worth the while. The plot is relatively straightforward - an ageing MI6 officer, after years of absence, decides to patch up relations with his two now grown-up sons. One is involved in the running and promotion of a super-club, the other is an artist who lives with a mismatched flirtatious journalist wife. The MI6 officer is killed early on in the book, and the two brothers are left to find out who killed him, why, and who he actually was. The plot then changes as Russian gangsters get involved with the super-club.

I've read Charles Cummings first book, A Spy by Nature, and I was very impressed by the author's promise. This book feels more polished than A Spy by Nature, and though I don't think it's the finished article just yet, there is enough here to convince me that A Spy by Nature was no one-off. Charles Cumming excels in understanding the murky, cold world of espionage. What he understands even better though is betrayal, guilt and greed. The relationships between the characters in the novel are expertly written - the relationships between the artist brother and his flirtatious wife is reminiscent in the authors subtle observation of the relationships between George Smiley and his adulterous wife in Le Carre's novels - the artist cannot be sure his wife is having an affair, the tension slowly burning throughout the book. Tension is something else Charles does very well - there are some brilliantly written scenes in the book allowing it to build up. At the start of the book the artist is invited to meet his father at the Savoy. His father does this in the calculation that the setting will discourage his son from a confrontational situation, and you can sense the frustration and anger of the son building as he senses this manipulation.

There are criticisms, of course. It is a little slow at points for a thriller. I think it drags a little after the father dies because you expect the rest of it to be about the sons finding out about their father, which it isn't really. They find out more about him, but it's almost like a sub-plot - the main plot becomes the problem with the Russian gangsters and their increasing involvement in the super-club. I think it would have worked better the other way round - the gangsters as the sub-plot. It keeps the book plot focused.

Despite the problems, I can't ignore the fact that this is another very promising work. This is a good contemporary thriller. I think it's only a matter of time before Charles Cumming writes a Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Quiet American. He's just not quite there yet.

5 out of 5 stars

The undiscovered master of spy fiction May 31, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Why has nobody told me about Charles Cumming? I bought The Spanish Game in 06 and thought it was superb so worked my way through his other books, A Spy By Nature and this one - The Hidden Man. It's a dense read, but a fascinating insight into what happens to families when one of their members (or more...) gets wrapped up in the world of espionage. It's not Ludlum-light. You need to keep concentrating and to remember who all the characters are, but it's extremely well written and very tense. Highly recommended if you want something with a bit more meat on it than Andy McNab or Stella Rimington.

1 out of 5 stars

Totally un-gripping May 30, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

Sorry to all reviewers who liked the book. I didn't. It started off OK, there are some good character descriptions, but overall I found it tedious. I like page-turners, but halfway through the novel I realised I didn't give a hoot about the story or the characters. I finished it just to see what happens but even that was a damp squib.