This is an auction for A COLDER WAR by Charles Cumming.

"Over several novels, Cumming has established himself as one of the best of today’s old-school espionage novelists. His latest, a follow-up to A Foreign Country (2012), finds disgraced agent Tom Kell still out in the cold after being scapegoated in the wake of a torture scandal. That changes quickly when his former colleague, Amanda Levene, now head of MI6, drafts Kell to find out whether the airplane crash that killed her lover, Paul Wallinger, head of station in Turkey, was an accident or the work of a suspected mole. Or moles - Wallinger himself may have been a traitor driven to suicide. We’re in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy territory here, of course, but there are also hints of later le Carré, as Kell falls in love with Rachel Wallinger, Paul’s daughter, and finds himself in that treacherous zone between the personal and the political. Cumming is a master at describing the details of spy tradecraft, from electronic wizardry to tailing a suspect on the street, and one of the great pleasures of this novel is watching Kell and his team do their work. But is the price of doing that work too high? Are ideals as deadly as bombs? Those are the fundamental questions of the spy novel, and Cumming asks them with great eloquence, revealing a contemporary twist or two in the way his characters frame their uncertain answers, but coming round in the end to the abiding melancholy that still shrouds all but the most heartless of spies. Superb espionage fiction in the grand tradition."

• a *** starred *** review in Booklist (US)

Very favourable reviews on Amazon.com.

Large format (trade) paperback 2014.

387 pages.

Very good condition.

The cost of shipping is $4.95 (ordinary post) or $6.95 (tracked mail). If you are on rural delivery and want tracked mail, the shipping cost will be $9.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Wellington following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.