Judas 62

Box 88 Series, Book 2

By: Charles Cumming

Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick

After a lifetime working with BOX 88, the transatlantic counterintelligence agency so covert that not even the CIA knows of its existence, master spy Lachlan Kite has made plenty of enemies. And now, as the director of the outfit's operations in the UK, one of those past enemies has him in their sights . . .

1993: Student Lachlan Kite is sent to post-Soviet Russia, a spy in the guise of a language teacher. Embedded in the town of Voronezh, Kite's mission is to extract a chemical weapons scientist before the man's groundbreaking research falls into the wrong hands and shuttle him across the border to freedom in Ukraine. But Kite's mission soon goes wrong and he is left stranded in a hostile city with a former KGB officer on his trail.

2020: Thirty years after that dangerous mission, Kite discovers that its outcome put his name on the notorious "JUDAS" list—a record of enemies of Russia who have been targeted for assassination. Kite's fight for survival takes him to Dubai, a city crawling with international intelligence officers, where he enters into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the Russian secret state.

©2021 Charles Cumming (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Adept at switching seamlessly between past and future

The narrator was great and author did a nice job of switching seamlessly between past and future

Boring.

Too much Randy young college student sex and drugs. Unrealistic scenarios! A waste of money!

A master at work

As good as Cumming gets and that is very, very good, once again. He is really a master

well crafted but.....

Another well crafted spy adventure but a bit laborious and extenuated. Not up to standards of his prior books but still a great listen.

Well written spy thriller

I enjoyed the story, the characters, and the narration was fine: not overly dramatic but also not monotone and boring.

Great story. Fast paced

Another wonderful book by Cummings about Box 88. The performance was excellent. I would love to find more books narrated by Elliot Fitzpatrick. He is amazing at different voices and different accents. Really makes the story come alive. Can’t wait for the next adventure by the box88 team.

Outstanding novel, composed and performed artfully

Another great spy novel by Cumming. This is a good series, and I’ve enjoyed his stand-alone novels as well.

Mostly very good, but very uneven in parts

This second Box 88 installment has a different narrator, he is excellent (as was the previous one). The settings are quite a bit different, and in parts very interesting. There is the usual excess fat in the storytelling (same problem on the 1st installment), but here the story is not as strong, particularly in the last third of the book. You could say it loses steam at the wrong time. Still, I find the quality of C. Cumming's writing in fleshing out the characters very good and enjoyable.

Too Much Anti-Russian Propaganda

I must say that I was a little surprised at the amount of anti-Russian propaganda that pervades this book. The very context with which the book ends reveals a subconscious desire to reveal what the book itself has done to the reader regarding providing fake news or narratives as real and true. I was disappointed, but on the other hand, I like the characters and the plot. 

So disappointing

Almost impossible to believe that this is the same author as that of The Trinity Six and the Thomas Kell books.
I felt the same about Box 88, but decided to give this sequel a chance, hoping Cumming may have just had a small slump.
I'm typing this while listening to Chapter 17 and am pretty sure I'll just delete it when I get off of this flight.
One upside: this narrator is much better than the one who read Box 88... but working with such drivel, it barely matters.