This is the latest in Charles Cumming's brilliant Box 88 espionage series, a US-British agency, featuring Lachlan 'Lockie' Kite and a number of what have by now become established characters. This begins with details of the harrowing horror that was the genocide 1994 Rwandan Civil War, in which Hutu militias wiped out so many Tutsis, whilst the world watched from a distance. We see what followed and the repercussions in this complex, multilayered story in which the French government and the DGSE do not come out well, set primarily in Senegal, whilst we learn more of Lockie and his past. As a young man, he had been part of an effort to gain a modicum of justice in Senegal in 1995, where the butcher of Kigali, Bagaza, had been sighted.

Posing as tourists as cover, Lockie is accompanied by his girlfriend, Martha Raine, who suffered serious health complications, but unhappily the operation ended in failure. In the intervening years, Bagaza and 'Lady Macbeth' have prospered through their nefarious activities, their ill-gotten gains making them powerful, and in the present, Box 88 and its agents are facing the possibility of being exposed, a consequence of which is that Lockie reconnects with Martha once more, a woman he still has feelings for. Lockie is in Sweden when he is contacted, with his wife and young daughter, he gains greater clarity over what happened in 1995 and receives information that has implications for Box 88 and those with links to it.

Lockie grasps the opportunity to redress what happened in 1995, despite the dangers, of finally securing some measure of justice, but at what price? As always, Cummings writes a thoughtful, tense, well plotted, nail biting espionage thriller that keeps the reader frantically turning the pages, right up to end. He provides a wonderful sense of the Senegalese location, making it come alive with his vibrant descriptions. I am left looking forward to the next book in this wonderful series. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

A brilliant spy thriller with two intertwined time lines - 1995 and now circa 2023. 1995 takes the reader back to the horrors of the Rwandan genocide. 2023 takes us to the dealings of BOX 88 – a covert intelligence organization and Lachlan Kite.

I have read Charles Cumming before and enjoy his style a great deal. Although this is not the first instalemtn of the Box 88 novels it did not distract from the story, i had not read any other Box 88 stories before this one (they others are 1 Box 88 and Judas 62.

This is a gripping, intricate, smart and suspenseful story .I will be reading more of Cumming's work in the future.

Mick Heron's brilliant series now portrayed on Apple + will hopefully bring more people to the spy genre and if they end up reading Kennedy 35 they will have struck gold.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an impartial review.

Would I recommend this - yes, with pleasure.

Another brilliant portrayal of espionage through the eyes of Lockie Kite, this time focused on activities following the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Once again, we move seamlessly between the past and the presence as we navigate through the intertwined plot and discover more about Kite’s past and presence, and how neither can be separated from Box 88 and who he is as a person.

Entertaining as ever, with a great plot and some great character development, Charles Cumming once again delivers a brilliant read. Oh, and the ending is something very special indeed.

Thank You NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for a review copy.

Like good wine, Charles Cummings is improving as time goes by. His latest secret service thriller starts with a joint US UK action to apprehend one of the instigators of the Rwandan genocide. fast forward to the present time and an investigative journalist is nearly ready to publish the story of that operation. Two of the protagonists in that episode are now big-time international money launderers and will kill to stop their business being exposed. One of them would like to kill any or any of the agents who acted against her. There is plenty of action, in Africa, New York and London. A terrific plot, well told.

Takes you on a thrilling journey of credible characters and tradecraft!

The third book in the Box 88 series takes the same format of the previous two novels by using intersecting time frames. This time. Lachlan Kite is taken back to 1995 in the wake of the Rwanda genocides where he is assigned to track down an African war criminal. Along for the ride, and with no idea of her boyfriend’s true reasons for being in Senegal, is Kite’s girlfriend, Martha Raine who becomes sick with a mysterious illness leaving him to go it alone. Then, fast forward to the present day and after meeting up with an old friend who is also attached to Box 88, events begin to spiral beyond Kite’s control as the past catches up with him, finding himself in the midst of a sinister criminal network. At the helm of this organisation is a ruthless woman who Kite encountered back in Senegal with reams of revenge firmly on her mind.
The action interweaves with the spy-craft as Box 88 work with the French Intelligence Service, the DGSE to track down who has been dubbed ‘Lady Macbeth’.
As expected from Mr Cumming, readers are taken on a thrilling journey of credible characters and tradecraft typical of all his back catalogue since bursting onto the espionage scene with ‘A Spy by Nature’ as Kite and his international team work their usual magic to bring down their target leading to an explosive breathtaking climax, which had me re-reading those final fast-paced, beautifully crafted short chapters over again because I found them so riveting. Then, there’s that ending… In conclusion, Kennedy 35 is another good spy novel from Cumming for which I personally as a writer of spy novels myself, have taken away some useful snippets and techniques. It is also an eagerly-awaited addition to the Box 88 continuum.

Not my usual genre so initially struggled with the background to this novel. With the scene set, it’s full paced into the build up to the thrills and spills of Lockie’s work as a British spy. The attraction of this novel was the setting in Senegal and it didn’t disappoint with descriptions. I found the book muddled at times with the various lead players, but the story of espionage and murders didn’t disappoint.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers Harper Collins for this advance copy.

A shameful period in history whilst the world stood by as the Rwanda massacre occurred when 70% of the Tutsi population were erased. Years later one of the main perpetrators of the genocide is identified.The story moves to 2022 when an allegation is made that the French amongst others knew what was happening and had turned a blind eye. Even more critical was the fact a former French spy had been involved and was now operating an illegal operation reaping large profits on a huge scale alongside a woman also culpable in the genocide. Moving to the present day a cat and mouse game commences involving a secret agent involved in a related previous catastrophic operation and other key participants who form a daring plan the aim of which is apprehend the perpetrators and extract a suitable punishment as revenge for the deaths of key members of the aborted operational disaster. Knife edge suspense, involving a convoluted daring plan played out against clever and manipulative villains produces a well written thriller leading to a frenetic climax. With nothing left to add to this well crafted storyline the author delivers a final below the belt blow that was impossible to predict leaving the reader reeling in terrifying disbelief at what may have been left unsaid. A thoroughly enjoyable thriller with numerous interesting three dimensional characters of which several have appeared in previous books by this author.. Many thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

I love this series ,I have read the previous two books and was looking forward to reading Kennedy 35 and I wasn't disappointed .Set in two time lines 1995 and present day British Spy Lockie is at his best .A clever fast paced gripping suspenseful story .I liked getting to know all the characters again. A really clever spy thriller ,I look forward to reading the next book in the series .Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC.

I didn’t know that this was the third book in a series, and really wish I’d read the others first. It was a tense, exciting and educational read, but to be honest I did get a bit lost at times and kept having to go back to find out who someone was and who they were working for. A very complex story which is thoroughly researched and extremely well written. I love Kite, and with the cliffhanger ending I’ll be sure to look out for the next in the series! Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the arc.

Kennedy 35 is the third of Cumming’s BOX 88 series of novels featuring the secret Anglo-American spy organisation that exists in the fringes of the intelligence services.

In the present day, Lachlan ‘Lockie’ Kite is the head of the UK division. We find him hoping for some rapprochement in his marriage to Isobel who has for time being headed home to Sweden with their young daughter. But Kite quickly has to return to London when he gets contacted by a former school colleague of his who needs to speak with him.

An American journalist has got hold of the memoirs of former French intelligence serviceman, and is planning to reveal all in his “Woodstein” podcast.

This is a novel that is set against the backdrop of the Rwandan genocide, and the immediate following. The book actually opens with a potted history of what happened before we get into the story itself. Once more, we travel back in time to see what happened when Kite was part of a BOX 88 team enlisted to capture an escaped figure central to the genocide. He and his equally culpable girlfriend are in Senegal, and he flies to Dakar taking his girlfriend Martha as cover.

They are to meet up with a local contact who turns out to be a French sometime photojournalist who has some curious behavioural issues – perhaps PTSD, perhaps because of the dangerous side effects of the anti-malarial drug lariam which he is taking.

The operation in Dakar very much goes sideways, and the outcome will have consequences decades later, with some of the characters who escaped the net back in the 90s now wealthy and fairly powerful themselves. Meanwhile both Kite and Martha’s names might be made public, so for the first time in many years, Kite is trying to reach Martha who is now happily married and living in New York. But he can’t reach her.

This is another great entry in the BOX 88 series, and the complexities and culpabilities of those who did nothing while so many hundreds of thousands died are explored here – not least the behaviour of the French government.

What I enjoy about these novels is that while they can be read as standalone titles, there is very much a through line telling the ongoing stories of key characters, and things are definitely ratcheting up in some of those stakes. I eagerly await the next book in the series.

so good to meet up with characters you know and love but can be read as a stand alone without any meaning of the story being lost.
An old operation has been unearthed by a journalist that is causing issues. Loose ends need tying that were allowed to escape the wrath of the secret services. The duo have been working unchecked for the last twenty years and no feel that they are untouchable. Taking actions to protect themselves they bring their actions under the spotlight of BOX88 and the French.
Will justice prevail after all this time or will they live to commit atrocities on a different continent?
Lockie and the team work hard to uncover identities and the full truth before it can harm anyone else and enter the public domain.

This is the third book I have read in the series and it keeps on getting better. I am totally hooked on this series.

A far from quiet life in the Intelligence Services

This is the third outing in the Box 88 series, about an even more secret service formed from some of the Intelligence service personnel of Britain and the States. But you really don’t need to have read those prior books – I haven’t, yet still I was gripped, absorbed, educated. And yes, I shall go back and read the first two, at some point, as the central character in this one, Lachlan Kite, clearly has a past worth discovering.

This is spying, bleak, gritty and brutal.

The overarching story concerns the Rwandan Civil War, and the genocide of somewhere between half a million and a million people, mainly Tutsis, but also moderate Hutus.

The story is told in two timelines.

In 1995, Kite is a fairly new recruit to the secret service, and, together with his girlfriend, are sent to Senegal, where one of the main people involved in mass brutal torture and murder during that genocide, is hiding out, with his equally brutal mistress. A concerted plan to capture and bring the pair to justice goes terribly wrong.

More than 25 years later, Kite, now a man in his 50’s risen high in the service, still involved in missions, married, with young a daughter, and now in Sweden, is recalled to London. Unfinished business has emerged connected with that complicated plan to bring perpetrators of war crimes and genocide to justice.

A gripping, exciting book that is a breath holding, thrilling rollercoaster ride and you just don’t know what will happen next. I couldn’t put the kindle down whilst reading it. I would recommend reading the previous book first though.

Cracking third spy thriller in a popular series.

This is a well-written and thoroughly-researched novel about the Rwandan Genocide and its aftermath.

Set mainly in Senegal, London and to some extent New York and Paris as well as other locations, this is a story about how an attempt to deliver justice for the victims of the nightmare of 1994 becomes a smaller nightmare in its own right, in 1995, leading to a significant accomplice escaping justice and being used by a (French) traitor to help him build a huge fortune by laundering money for terrorists. 28 years later, an opportunity arises to put things right, but not without more danger and a further terrible sacrifice. The concluding adventure sequence delivers justice in a satisfying way, but the leading character is left on the cusp of seizing personal disaster from his professional triumph. (This makes the reader wish that someone would hit him briskly on the shins with a cricket bat, but it no doubt sets the scene for the next volume in the series.)

The French government (especially in 1994, but also that of 2023) does not come out of this at all well and it’s very hard to argue, from the evidence in the public domain, that this is in any way undeserved. The DGSE are portrayed as making the CIA look like boy scouts and that might not be too far off the mark, either.

The central premise of the BOX 88 series, though, is a joint Anglo-American intelligence agency acting below the radar. In any kind of real-world practice this might be a recipe for internecine warfare rather than successful cooperation. In actual fact, there was a vitally-important joint UK-USA photo-reconnaissance organisation during WWII, which a Colonel Roosevelt (the president’s son) recommended, on the eve of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, be wound up because the Limey-faggot RAF was in charge! And it is unlikely that BOX 88 could operate “below the radar” in a world where a US Senator on the intelligence and foreign relations committee can be found in possession of a closet full of unexplained gold bars and carrier-bags of banknotes!

But, as a literary device, the Anglo-American BOX 88 with America as by far the senior partner allows the DGSE to be the not-quite enemy in a way that would be enormously offensive to a large swathe of pro-EU opinion if BOX 88 were British! Which is all good fun.

I really enjoyed this book. It's part of the Box 88 series but it can be read as a standalone.

Kennedy 35 centres around the Rwandan Genocide in 1995, and links it to recent events in 2022 which could threaten the espionage group.

What can I say? I love Charles Cumming's books. The way he describes places makes you feel you're there with the charatcers, the storylines are thrilling and I love the backstory of Box 88!

Highly recommended.

I really enjoy this series. I got hooked when I read Box 88 and am still enthralled. In Kennedy 35 we encounter Lockie again, slightly older but still active. A lot of the story is told as a flashback to events just after the Rwandan war and the skill of the author is that he seemlessly weaves the history into his narrative. I confess I didn’t pay much attention to what was happening in that part of Africa at the time, but I don’t think I am alone in that. I’m so greedy but I’m already looking forward to the next instalment!

The book starts by providing a brief background history lesson on the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, in which half a million Tutsi lives were taken by Hutu militias – all this in a period of around three months. I can remember horrifying nightly news reports of this slaughter at the time, reports that stayed with me for a long time.

The story opens in 2023 when Lockie Kite (star of the previous two books in this series (BOX 88 and Judas 62) is enjoying a sabbatical in Sweden with his wife and young child. He’s notified that an old school chum and ‘friend’ of Box 88, a top secret Anglo-American collaboration, is trying to get hold of him. Once connected, Kite is told that a respected American instigative reporter has gotten hold of information regarding a botched operation carried out by Box 88 in 1995 and is about to break the story to the public. But how much does the reporter know? Does he actually have names of those involved and is he also about to expose the existence of the secret agency itself? The former would be a problem for Kite and would potentially end his career, but it would be a severe embarrassment for both the UK and American governments should details of their undisclosed partnership be made public.

As he’s mulling over what he needs to do – which will inevitably begin with a trip back to London – he takes the unusual step of walking his wife through the 1995 operation. A French journalist had reported the sighting of a man known as the Butcher of Kigali, for his involvement in the Tutsi massacres the previous year. He’d been spotted in Senegal and Kite along with his then girlfriend Martha were dispatched to the country, disguised as a pair backpackers. Once there they would liaise with other members of the team, their goal being to grab their target and smuggle him out of the country. Suffice to say, the operation itself went badly and stands to this day as an embarrassment to the Box 88 team.

Once back in the UK, Kite has to orchestrate a response to the threat posed by the reporter. But he quickly finds out that there are now additional elements in play. It’s a clever story, really well told by an author who, I believe, never lets his readers down. Espionage thrillers can be complex beasts, with the action often being too murky for me to be able to follow. But Cumming has the ability to tell a complex story in a way that’s doesn’t lose me along the way. This is another strong book in what is now an excellent short series.

The best yet in the Lachlane Kite ('Lockie') novels by Charles Cummings. Back in 1995 Lachlane and his girlfriend Martha are sent to Senegal. Lachlane doesn't really have a brief except to courier some money for an up and cominging op. He will be contacted at a beach guest house by persons unknown with just a verbal clue as to identity. He spends his days playing the tourist with Martha until finally, 'contact' is made. Still as yet without a role, he checks out of the guest house with Martha and joins his contact on the long journey to meet the 'team'. However, Martha is really ill, suffering from possible food poisoning but not getting any better, certainly the sweltering car ride does not help. Eventually Lochlane is faced with a choice between the mission and caring for Martha, he chooses the former. Relying on an old school chum, Lochlane leaves his girlfriend in his care. Her illness is one of many things which bedevil the mission.
Some 28 years later, his old school chum contacts him with news about the mission all those years ago. Lochlane, now with a daughter and wife he's trying to reconcile with, realises this may jeopardise his recovering relationship but has his loyalty to Box88 uppermost. As events unravel, he worries his ex-girlfriend Martha might be in trouble and tries to put measures in place to protect her. It's clear though that he still has feelings for Martha, someone he let go so that she could have a 'normal' life, seemingly without danger and living in America. But now she has divorced her husband and is back living in London. There's an invitation to meet up and Kite tells himself that he was too settled in his marriage to be changed by a reunion with his firts love. Well good luck with that one Lachlane!
This is a very intense thriller, full of things that can go wrong in an overseas operation, so, very realistic. It also gives insight to how various security agencies protect themselves and their political masters. The demise of Maurice Lagarde rang a very suspicious bell with me as it brought to mind Dr David Kelly.

Another great outing from the box 88 series.
I only had vague recollections of the previous book but fell back into lockies story really easily.

I found this to be a rare type of thriller as Charles Cummins combines the thrills with great prose. Not only was I drawn back into the world of Lachlan Kite but, thanks to the author’s writing, I could envisage every place and situation he found himself in. Kennedy 35 has the Rwandan genocide as its core and the atrocities which defined this period evoke a chilling backdrop. As usual the characterisation is spot on and the plot entirely believable. I can’t wait to discover what Kite gets up to next and for the outcome of Kennedy 35’s cliffhanger of an ending! Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the eARC.