A Foreign Country

Charles Cumming

2 ideas

1. Incoming spy chief vanishes to meet son

   Amelia Levene, about to become the first woman to head MI6, disappears weeks before taking office, and disgraced officer Thomas Kell traces her through France and Tunisia. He finds that as a young woman she had a son she gave up, and that she has gone to meet the man she believes is that son. French intelligence has substituted an impostor and is holding her real son captive.

2. Institutions scapegoat individuals then quietly reuse them

   Kell was pushed out of SIS after being present at the interrogation of a terror suspect who was mistreated by American officers, so the service could show accountability without examining its own complicity. When a crisis needs someone deniable and outside official channels, the same institution brings him back. The disgraced officer's usefulness comes from the same marginal status his punishment created.

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