The Trinity Six-Charles Cumming

The Trinity Six
Charles Cumming
St. Martin's, Mar 15 2011, $24.99
ISBN 978-0-312-67529-5

During WWII and immediately afterward the "Cambridge Five" Trinity spy ring betrayed Britain by providing secrets to the Soviet Union. Once the ring was broken, rumors abounded for years that a sixth person was involved, but had escaped justice.

In 1992 septuagenarian Edward Crane dies in London. Fifteen years later, a reporter Charlotte Berg asks her friend Russian scholar Sam Gaddis to help her investigate rumors that the sixth person was Crane who allegedly did not die in the hospital, but instead lives and plans to tell his tale. Sam needs money to pay alimony and child support so he agrees because he believes he can write a book on what he learns if true. However, someone wants the news to remain interred as those involved with learning the facts like Charlotte allegedly died from a sudden heart attack; Sam believes she was murdered.

This is a terrific espionage thriller, which makes the case that the Cold War participants spent plenty of efforts on propaganda with disinformation and misinformation a normal spin (inductively supported though not Cold War era material by the recent WikiLeaks’ government entries of recent years). Fast-paced from start to finish, readers will relish Charles Cumming’s tale of whether the Cambridge Five was actually the Trinity Six.

Harriet Klausner