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    The Trinity Six
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    The Trinity Six
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    The Trinity Six
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Trinity Six

    Written by Charles Cumming

    Narrated by Jot Davies

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    **Don't miss the gripping new espionage thriller by Charles Cumming, KENNEDY 35! Pre-order the paperback now**

    Perfect for fans of John le Carré, a gripping and suspenseful spy thriller from ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday)

    Hard-up Russia expert Dr Sam Gaddis finally has a lead for the book that could solve all his career problems. But the story of a lifetime becomes an obsession that could kill him.

    When his source is found dead, Gaddis is alone on the trail of the Cold War’s deadliest secret: the undiscovered sixth member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring.

    Suddenly threatened at every step and caught between two beautiful women, both with access to crucial evidence, Sam cannot trust anyone.

    To get his life back, he must chase shadows through Europe’s corridors of power. But the bigger the lie, the more ruthlessly the truth is kept buried…

    Praise for The Trinity Six

    ‘In the first rank of the new generation of espionage writers’ The Times

    ‘An utterly absorbing and compelling novel. A brilliant re-imagining of events surrounding the notorious Cambridge spy-ring’ William Boyd, bestselling author of Restless

    ‘Classy … an assured and richly enjoyable thriller’ Sunday Times

    ‘Delicate and supremely controlled, this is a spy story to be savoured, not rushed’ Daily Mail

    ‘None of the new generation of spy writers lives up to the standard set by Deighton, Forsyth and Le Carré. Enter Cumming, a long-awaited light at the end of a very long tunnel … As good as Le Carré – praise indeed’ Guardian

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 3, 2011
    ISBN9780007416653
    Unavailable
    The Trinity Six
    Author

    Charles Cumming

    Charles Cumming was born in Scotland in 1971. In the summer of 1995, he was approached for recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A year later he moved to Montreal where he began working on a novel based on his experiences with MI6, and A Spy by Nature was published in the UK in 2001. In 2012, Charles won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller and the Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year for A Foreign Country. A Divided Spy is his eighth novel.

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    Reviews for The Trinity Six

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      A novel of mystery regarding espionage in England and Russia during the 1930s with repercussions in the present day. Well crafted with twists and turns in the plot. Somewhat drawn out in parts but I would recommend it!
    • 4/5
      In The Trinity Six, Charles Cummings picks up on the tradition of authors such as John le Carre in the genre of Cold War British spy novel. The prime innovation is that rather than using a spy as the main character, Cummings uses a professor of Russian history named Sam Gaddis. Gaddis is an academic trope of sorts in that he is an excellent historian, but down on his luck and in his attempt to extricate himself stumbles upon a quarter century old story that could collapse a government.But I am getting ahead of myself. One of the most famous spy rings in history was the Magnificent Five. Maclean, Burgess, Blunt, Philby and Cairncross were students at Cambridge in the 1930's when they were recruited by a professor as spies for Russia. At the time of recruitment they were soldiers in the war against fascism in Europe. Each excelled and took posts in the British government, working against fascism, but also passing information to their Russian masters. In the 1950's when the Americans began to break encryption patterns from World War II, they caught on to Maclean and Burgess and the ring began to collapse. The last of the Magnificent Five, Blunt was not exposed until 1979. But perhaps these five were not alone; perhaps there was a sixth, and that is the discovery from which all of Gaddis' adventures stem. One revelation leads to another and Gaddis finds himself unravelling one Cold War myster after another.Despite the traditional qualifier that all characters are used fictitiously and the story is a product of the author's imagination, the situation presented of an immensely popular Russian President who was a mid-ranking officer in the last years of the Cold War, but through brutal suppression of opponents of his reign had transformed into a dictator in all but name, smacks of reality. Perhaps incidental, but Cummings reveals a commentary on the Russian state. All the while The Trinity Six is compelling and an easy read. My only critique is that at one or two points the supposedly coincidental events seem to be a stretch. As such they make the story seem somewhat railroaded, rather than a narrative that actually could happen. But it is not the characters or anything that they do, or even the scenario that is unconvincing. Simply put, there was just one too many coincidences.Anyone who likes thrillers or spy novels ought to give The Trinity Six a read. Cummings is not yet to the level of le Carre, however the best is yet to come and this is a good place to start.
    • 4/5
      Charles Cumming has written a great spy novel that I found I just wanted to keep on reading. It follows the story of Sam Gaddis a lecturer at University College London (UCL) who stumbles into the untold story of the sixth spy beyond the Cambridge "ring of five" (Philby, Burgess, Mclean, Blunt and Cairncross).The true history is well represented, and intermingled well with the plot lines, making for a convincing story with several sub-plots running simultaneously.It's a gentle thriller, and when the action takes place it is not given pages to draw it out in a gratuitous way, so when are removed from the plotline, it happens and things move on. very quickly to the next scene.The ending is sort of what I was expecting, so no big surprise for me there, but still i found it something that kept me engrossed.I haven't read Charles Cumming before, but will certainly go back to some of his past books based on this.
    • 4/5
      This book was received from LibraryThing through their Early Reviewers program.By mixing the history of “The Cambridge Five” spy ring in the 1930’s and adding another dimension of an additional spy, we begin the thriller of tracking down that “sixth” member.When Sam Gaddis, a British professor of Russian studies agrees to co-author a book with his ex-girlfriend and now good friend, Charlotte he never dreams that she would die so suddenly.Because of his financial obligations, Sam pushes on with her husband’s approval and starts to investigate this intriguing speculation. Events keep stirring the pot and unanswered questions just keep Sam on the trail of the missing member.So many exciting details of the espionage between England and Russian keep us twisting in our seats and never knowing where to turn. Who can you trust? Who is who? The deals made between countries remind me of the “political world” that exists everywhere and that we are unable to escape from. Every situation has a price and what are we willing to pay?The final message is you cannot keep a good spy down.Any reader who likes spy novels or thrillers should give The Trinity Six a chance to stimulate their senses. Charles Cummings is on his way to becoming an author to follow in the future. I know I will look forward to his next book.
    • 4/5
      The death in 1992 of an elderly but retired career diplomat seems like an odd basis for a spy thriller. But add to this a current Russian president who is a former KGB operative with a secret and a duplicitous MI-6 who is willing to allow the president’s past to remain a secret. Finally, throw in the deaths of several apparently innocent people and you have a pretty good yarn.Sam Gaddis, a British academic who writes comparative studies of Peter the Great in his spare time, is at the center of this novel of intrigue, the protection of old spies, and an effort to determine if there was a six member of the infamous Cambridge Five. It is a plausible story told with believable characters. While Dr. Gaddis is too well protected from some of the violence going on around him, it is still a recommended read for those who enjoy the spy genre.
    • 4/5
      Charles Cumming has written a great espionage novel in "The Trinity Six". The premise is that there was a sixth man associated with the Trinity Five (British spies working for Russia). The novel keeps moving at a pretty good pace, has enough historical detail to be believable, and keeps the reader engaged with little twists along the way. This one is a must for anyone who enjoys espionage novels!
    • 4/5
      Sam Gaddis is an academic who needs money for his daughter’s private school. He believes that working on a book with a friend will take care of his money woes until that friend dies. However, Gaddis becomes involved in looking at the notes, working on the book and finding a sixth spy for the Cambridge Five. The Cambridge Five were young, collegiate men who were recruited to spy for Russia and successfully passed classified information from the British government for years. Then Gaddis realizes that the people he is talking to, the people involved with the sixth spy story are being killed and his own life may also be in danger. This book was a great read. Cummings has just the right amount of dialogue, action, romance, description, and plot twists. Gaddis is a bumbler, yet so earnest that you can’t help but cheer him on in his quest. Even the people who are assigned to keep him from investigating the sixth spy can’t help but like him and help him with his search. While some might say that it isn’t as involved as leCarre or Ludlum, that is exactly why I liked it so much, I could read it without taking notes to remember each character and where they fit into the story. It was just a good book for reading over a long weekend.
    • 4/5
      There is nothing like a spy story and no one does spies better than the British. THE TRINITY SIX is to some degree a descendant of John Lecarre but, as fiction, it is history far more thinly veiled than the exploits of George Smiley.There are few countries that have suffered as much damage from their spies as Great Britain. From the 1930′s into the 1960′s Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, and John Cairncross sold some of Britain’s most important security information to the Russians. The five men met as students at Trinity College, one of the colleges which comprise Cambridge University. They were ablie to infiltrate some of Britain’s highest level government agencies; one even worked at Bletchley Park where young people, referred to as the clever children, created the Enigma machine that allowed the British to read Germany’s code during World War II. Anthony Blunt’s cover was so deep that he was knighted for his work in protecting and preserving the art works owned by the royal family.James Jesus Angleton was one of the first people chosen by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when the president decided to establish an espionage unit during World War II. At the end of the war, when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) became the Central Intelligence Agency, Angleton was asked to continue as one of the top directors. Angleton and Kim Philby had met during the war and became good friends during the time Philby was assigned to Washington, DC. Angleton didn’t follow his own rules about spy craft and gave Philby information that was to detrimental to the United States interests at the beginning of the Cold War.In THE TRINITY SIX, Sam Gaddis, a professor at University College London, and the author of a very successful biography of Russian leader Sergei Platov (a thinly disguised Vladimir Putin), discovers he is woefully short of money. He has a very significant tax bill that needs to be paid immediately and he has received a series of phone calls from his ex-wife, living in Spain, reminding him that the mortgage on her house is coming due and their daughter’s school fees are past due. Sam needs money and needs it fast so his solution is to write a series of popular histories that can be written quickly and sold immediately. Before he has his plans in place, he receives a phone call from an old friend, Charlotte Berg. Charlotte is an award winning journalist and she has a story she wants to release under her byline and, then, she wants to work with Sam to develop it into a book. If Sam writes this book, there won’t be any need to worry about money. Charlotte says she has seen proof that Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross were not the Trinity Five but were part of the Trinity Six. The sixth man is alive and there is proof of his involvement in the spy ring. Although he would be in his ninetie’s, finding him and pushing him out into the light of day would be a major coup financially and professionally.When Charlotte dies after a heart attack, Sam decides to complete the book to honor her memory. As he digs, Sam gets information about an odd event that had occurred at a hospital in 1992. “The dead man was not a dead man. He was alive but he was not alive. That was the situation.” Sam gets this information from a nurse, Calvin Somers, who describes the very strange events that were known to only a few people who were paid a lot of money to forget that night. Calvin is giving Sam the details including the most important detail of all. The man in charge, who called himself Douglas Henderson, is really Sir John Brennan, the current head of MI6.The past is the present and the sixth man is big news. As Sam has secret meetings with old spies and young spies, he finds himself pulled into the puzzle palace, a term used to describe the CIA that applies equally to MI6.. The beginning of THE TRINITY SIX seems to be a puzzle in itself. There are many names, alternate names, acronyms, and code words, so many that in the beginning of the book it is a bit slow going. Yet, once the reader gets into the author’s rhythm, the book flows smoothly and it is a reminder that the Cold War must be taken seriously, even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.The author gives away the identity of the sixth man early in the story. It doesn’t make the book any less worth reading. But the fictional story about Sam Gaddis and the sixth man isn’t as interesting as the story of the old Trinity spies and the espionage in the United States that led to the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the horrors of the McCarthy hearings.THE TRINITY SIX will be published on March 15. I received an advanced reader’s copy from the Library Thing.
    • 4/5
      Charles Cummings is quickly moving up my list. A solid British spy novel.
    • 4/5
      A very good read that slowly gives you information that will lead you to the conclusion but not until the very end do you get the final piece. If you enjoy a trying to determine the end before you get there then you will enjoy this book but you will not guess the ending. Well worth the time invested.
    • 4/5
      Cumming draws on real British spy history in linking his tale to Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, Philby et. al. His hero is a Russian history scholar, Dr. Sam Gaddis, who has just published a book comparing Putin to Peter the Great. A journalist friend gives him a hint a a blockbuster story she is working on...and then dies. He figures out the basics of the story, but as he begins researching the tale other people die. Slowly, it dawns on him that he is going down a forbidden road, and that is the main problem with the book. Sam is a bit of a dolt. He is constantly being surprised as thugs in both the British and Russian secret services play a dirty game of keeping him, or trying to keep him, in the dark. He is saved by his persistence and a 20-something female operative who is as competent and street-smart as he is not. Stieg Larsson has, with Lisbeth Salander, provided a template for many writers these days to create young, tough, and jaded female heroines who save their men. Cumming gets the atmospherics down perfectly, and the history is interesting. But it would have been a better book if Dr. Sam Gaddis was a stronger, more capable, more aware individual.
    • 4/5
      This book follows an in debt academic Sam Gaddis who is struggling financially to keep himself afloat and to pay his spousal support and for his daughter’s education. He is contacted by Charlotte Berg, journalist and friend, about her research into rumors of a sixth person in the famous Cambridge five spy ring. She asks him to be a co-author and with his financial troubles mounting, he jumps at the opportunity. Little does he know that there is a group of people that wants to keep this knowledge a secret. The story follows Sam’s journey though numerous European cities interviewing the key players involved with knowledge of the sixth member. As Sam does not know that his life is in danger until he hears that everyone we has talked to ends up dead starting with Charlotte’s death. The book has a fantastic ending and many twists and turns to keep the reader looking forward to the next page.
    • 2/5
      The book had potential, but the clunky prose made it difficult to engage in the premise of the story. The characters were pretty cliche (particularly the females) and the reader could get quickly surmise the direction the different "twists" were taking. Hopefully, Cumming's future works will be progressively get polished, but I'll stick to Tom Rob Smith for quality suspense and prose!
    • 4/5
      This book is a slow starter but once it gets going it gets really good. Having never been to Europe, I found that the author did an outstanding job bringing me there and immersing me into the culture of places I've dreamed of being. And in the end, Charles Cumming held the best parts for the end. It's a James Bond movie in 300+ pages...and you're right there watching it while it happens.
    • 2/5
      I really had a difficult time caring about any of the characters in this book enough to keep reading it. I've picked it up a few times and read a little bit, and then put it down in favor of something else.
    • 4/5
      The Cambridge Five, as you probably know, was a ring of spies all recruited by the Soviets after having become communists during their years at university in the thirties. Four of the five--Kim Philby, Donald Duart Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt--have been definitively known since the fifties and early sixties. The presence of a fifth member of the group was long suspected, and many consider John Cairncross to be the likeliest candidate.Charles Cumming, in his spy thriller The Trinity Six takes the premise a step further by positing a sixth spy, one who was never caught (or defected), and who may still be alive. His novel slants the action differently than most spy novels by making the protagonist not a spy or an intelligence officer, but rather a professor of Russian studies. Sam Gaddis is the fortyish academic, divorced, behind in his mortgage and tax payments and being pressed by his ex-wife for additional child support. When asked by a journalist friend to co-write a book based on interviews she's currently conducting about the possible sixth man, Gaddis jumps at the chance. Days later his friend is dead. As he pursues the leads she had begun to uncover, Gaddis discovers most people unwilling to discuss the subject with him...and those who do seem to end up dead as well. Cummings has written a tidy (though perhaps a bit coincidence-ridden) thriller which flies along at a satsifyingly brisk clip. Sam Gaddis is mopey and self-centered, but smart and capable as well. The Trinity Six, while not one for the ages, is still a worthy contribution to the spy thriller genre, and well worth a read.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book was great. It does shift and twist a bit from what I thought would be a book mainly about a sixth member of the Cambridge Five and his exploits. But the twist is interesting and entertaining. It leaves one to wonder if perhaps the current Russian leaders may have similar skeletons in their collective closets.
    • 4/5
      This is a fun, readable suspense novel. It is well-written and fast-paced. Not particularly memorable, indeed, but enjoyable. A good example of the genre.
    • 3/5
      Nothing special. Is an attempt to elaborate on the British spy scandal of Burgess & McClean. The principle character is schizophrenic in that he vacillates between utter calm and fright instantly. The author attempts to introduce indignation for carrying on the story but rings hollow.
    • 3/5
      Anyone who is in any way interested in spies, spying and the world of espionage in general, has surely read at least one of John le Carré's genre defining classics. Not the later gardening and Panama nonsense, but the unforgettable Cold War, 'Smiley' intrigues.

      Especially if you're English, that is.

      And if you are lucky enough to be English and of a certain age, then you probably already have the whole '30's Cambridge spy ring, the old boy network running the country from their hushed, mahogany and teak Club in The City, the Cold War and the whole East vs West thing as a big game, already with you when you read a book like this. You don't need the spy world explained to you again from scratch. You know what a 'dead letter-box' is, you know what 'tradecraft', 'Moscow Centre' and 'C' are. The author can, with a nod and a wink and relatively few words, have you with him and get on with other things. You understand the world he is writing about and what I can well imagine would seem a rather unbelievable, class-ridden, privileged, strange world - makes perfect sense.

      (However, that could be surely be why a non-middle-aged, non-English person would get nothing from, for example, the recent (poor) 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' re-adaption. My Danish wife, for example).

      But one big problem the way I see it, is like this: How much is fact and how much is John le Carré fiction become fact in our collective recollection? I can imagine that it might also be a problem for any new authors wanting to write a novel set in this world: Do you write about actual institutions, actual events and run the risk that no one believes the world you're describing, or do you use some of le Carré's inventions, base your fiction on fiction and have your readers assume you're writing about the truth.

      Basically what I mean is, that all novels written into this particular period of the spy genre, surely have to be compared in some way or another, with the world le Carré created. How they stand up to that comparison is, unfortunately, how we then rate them. "It's good, but it's not as good as le Carré." "It's better than le Carré." "It's unrealistic (doesn't use le Carre's world)" That kind of thing. Maybe.

      Whatever your opinions or experience of le Carré and the spy genre, it's well worth giving Charles Cummings' 'Trinity Six' a go. it won't disappoint. It is set in the recent past, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but is actually all about the present day repercussions from events that took place over the eighty years up until the fall of Communism. A middle-aged, recently separated from his wife academic, a lecturer in Russian affairs and part-time writer, gets dragged into present day intrigues and puts himself unknowingly in danger by getting himself caught up in other, old spy games. We travel around in Europe (surely a little less exciting since the fall of the Berlin Wall?) and we meet a variety of nice, not so nice and not so sure if they're nice, characters. There are young spies, middle-aged spies and un-reformed old Cambridge spies. It's very nearly bang up-to-date, technology-wise, but with enough links back to the good old spying glory days, to satisfy those still missing decent books about the Cold War - me, for instance. It's nicely paced and focussed, it doesn't dash unnecessarily about all over the place, it stays believable and has some decent twists, turns and revelations. Of course, the ordinary person caught up in an extraordinary world the don't understand, is nothing new, but the intrigue is genuine and there's some nice moments of suspense and uncertainty.

      'Trinity Six' is a good, enjoyable read which often feels like an Alan Furst, (obviously set today rather than between the wars). That's absolutely ok with me. For those of us who have read le Carré's spy books, there's no avoiding the fact that it's not quite be up there with the Master's best. But if you haven't read le Carré, you may actually be the lucky ones and so 'Trinity Six' is an excellent entré to the mirror world of British old-school espionage.
    • 4/5
      An extremely good Cold War thriller set in the present day when our protagonist, a British professor, finds himself investigating claims surrounding the classic Cambridge affair and the Cold War decades afterwards. It seems that there are still people out there who don't particularly like the fact that he's doing research and dredging up old stories, but who's trying to kill him and those close to him? In today's thriller world, most geopolitical thrillers involve Muslim extremists, and for good reason, but it was a blast here to get something of a flashback to the glory days of the likes of Ludlum and Le Carre, when the Russians were the bad guys and the global stakes were huge. This was a joy to read and fun from start to finish. It was full of good characters, starting with the protagonist and carrying through to the "retired" spies and the new breed of spies who have replaced them. And then there are the bad guys, of course. The story was good, as well, and I had no complaints with the pacing, which seems to be a rarity for me these days. Really, the only beef I had was in the fact that there really weren't any last-minute plot twists, or anything. In that sense, you could have pretty much figured out where this was all headed when you were about halfway to two-thirds of the way through it. An eleventh-hour surprise or two could have lifted this one to five-star status, but instead it's "just" a very solid four.
    • 4/5
      The excellent BBC mini-series Cambridge Spies left me with an enduring fascination with the Blunt/Burgess/Philby/MacLean quartet and I was eager to read any book that might shed further light on the thoughts and activities of these unlikely traitors who went from a life of enviable privilege to one of dreary austerity behind the Iron Curtain. Apparently there was a Fifth Man, John Cairncross, who spent the war decoding German ciphers at Bletchly Park, but whose identity was never revealed. The Trinity Six postulates, obviously, that there was even a sixth man [candidates include Prime Minister Harold Wilson and MI5 head Sir Roger Hollis] and the ring of Soviet agents extended to Oxford as well.Protagenist Sam Geddis teaches Russian history at London University College: his latst book The Tsars, which compares Peter the Great with current Russian dictator Sergei Platov [he dosn't even try to hide the fact he's writing on Vladimir Putin; only the name is changed] may be well regarded but has not made him any money and he is in urgent need of a popular best-seller to pay the IRS and his daughter's school fees. When a journalist friend drunkenly reveals she has the identity of the Sixth Man in the Cambridge Spy ring and suggests they collaborate on a book, it seems too good to be true: she dies shortly thereafter and Gaddis tries to find leads in her notes andf computer, which eventually lead him to Edward Anthony Crane, whose death was faked by the secret service many years previous. As he delves deeper into the long-buried secrets of Cold War espionage, he coms to the attention of both the English and the Russian secret services: his trips to various European cities such as Vienna, Budapest and Moscow put him in danger and it is only the intervention of beautiful British spy Tanya Acocella that saves him on more than one occassion as his contacts keep getting murdered. Agents, double agents, triple agents, and embarrassing secrets governments will kill to protect even 20 years later, The Trinity Six is an interesting and excellent thriller. It has less about the original Cambridge Four than I would have liked but it is still an informative and exciting read.
    • 2/5
      I think my expectations were too high for this book. It sounded great from the blurb and I was excited when I got it via LibraryThing Early Reviewers so I read it right away, finished it, and thought, "meh."I've never really been into espionage thrillers. When I was growing up it was mostly James Bond and I've always thought he was kind of a wanker. He's a misogynist psychopath paid to kill with a bunch of silly gadgets and fancy cars and the requisite bimbo. Even though Sean Connery is the best Bond ever, I still don't really like the character. Most other espionage thrillers are in a similar vein or they've got heroes like Jason Bourne who isn't really a hero, but rather a superhero. This is also a series where the movies are better than the books (which I can't get through).So why was I excited about this book?Well, it was compared to John le Carre's George Smiley books and it's about the possibly sixth member of the Trinity Five - a particularly fascinating group of men. I thought there'd be a bit more history in it since its main character is a professor of Russian history. Not so much.Don't get me wrong - this book is well-written and probably an entertaining thriller if you like the victim of espionage side of things which I don't really. It's not a bad book - just not the book for me.
    • 4/5
      It sounds trite, but I must say I had a very difficult time putting this book down. Cumming maintains a brisk tempo, with crisp chapters and limited distractions. As an espionage novel, it has an appropriate number of enjoyable plot twists, with an orientation toward deception and intrigue to move the action, rather than blunt violence. While the book takes place in the present-day, Cumming does a solid job of making the story almost a sort of historical fiction by having his characters relate what we perceive as history in a manner that is, to them, personal experience. I'd suspect that (in the right hands) this would make a solid movie. This was the first book I've read by Cumming; I'll be looking to pick up others.Obligatory disclaimer: read a free ARC via LT ER.
    • 4/5
      Let me state first and foremost , this is an exceptionally well written book. In the beginning it was a little slow and I found myself distracted by trying to figure out how much was actually true and how much was literary invention. Eventually I just got caught up in the story and thoroughly enjoyed the tale of a Russian history academic who stumbles on the 6th spy of the notorious Cambridge 5. The writing and pacing remind me a lot of john LeCarre and Graham Greene. A definite recommendation.
    • 5/5
      I'm not usually a reader of political espionage type novels, so in the beginning I found the book a little boring. It goes into the back ground of a British spy ring. I really thought the whole book was going to bore me to death, but I was very surprised to find it picking up speed and interest once the foundation for the tale was laid.Sam Gaddis, a professor, writer and intellectual, comes upon the story of a lifetime at a time when he sorely needs money. So he embarks upon his research, while people get killed all around him. He travels and becomes personally involved in this whole web of espionage, and is forced to do things he never thought he would ever do.On the whole, I found this book quite entertaining, and I'm glad I read it.
    • 5/5
      This my first exposure to the details of the Cambridge Five spies. Cumming makes learning the history of this group interesting. This is a entertaining work of fiction. "The Trinity Six" is a great tale of deception, greed, and betrayal.
    • 4/5
      Although this book wasn't what I was expecting, I enjoyed it very much. The title is a reference to the infamous "Cambridge spy ring"--Kim Philby being its most notorious member--who had infiltrated British intelligence, but had been working for the Soviets from World War II through the early '60s. There had been 5 in that ring, and some had speculated that there had also been a 6th as-yet-undiscovered member. This novel premises that that indeed was true.

      Having just read a book (non-fiction) about Philby, I thought this novel might be atmospherically set in that time, ala Alan Furst or LeCarre's George Smiley books. However, it has a contemporary setting, in which a London academic stumbles upon the research of a friend who has found a source alleging the "6th man" did indeed exist and was still alive. But neither British nor Russian intelligence wants that information to become public knowledge (they both have their reasons), and pursuits and deaths result.

      The Trinity Six falls into that long-honored story tradition of the innocent man caught in intrigues he can barely comprehend, and it tells that story well.
    • 4/5
      This one fits what I like to call the "spy/thriller beach read" genre. The story follows a familiar plot trajectory: Academic follows up on information for a potential new book and in the process becomes an unlikely participant in the high-stakes espionage activities of two world super powers. Building on the real world Cambridge Spy Ring - proven fodder for numerous other espionage thrillers - this one has the look and feel of the familiar. The story has a very slow start, with the "adrenaline-pumping thriller" part being pretty much non-existence except for certain parts of the last 1/3 of the story. For readers who like to see a solid female character - always a challenge to find when reading spy genre - Cummings does a decent job with the creation of Tanya, an MI6 spy. Breaking the usual spy writing mode, Tanya is not glamorous. She is good at her job and wants to be appreciated for her abilities while trapped in the typical male-centrist MI6 world and reporting to a dismissive boss. Cummings weaves the usual plot where we find spies spying on Gaddis while being spied on by other spies.Overall, the familiar and predictable can make for good vacation reading and I would categorize this book as a decent vacation/beach read.
    • 3/5
      Although slow to start, once I was about 50 pages in, I found myself reading this book quite voraciously. Both vivid and engaging, it was a great read. I was only sorry to have it come to an end, especially since I wasn't ready for my journey with the characters to be over.