Foreign countries are all of the countries that you do not live in, so if you reside in Somalia, then every country other than Somalia will be considered a foreign country in your eyes. So, there will always be someone who does not define a country that you view as foreign as foreign in their eyes. And the game IS being an expert on lies. Lies and waiting. Spies lie. And wait. Intelligence agents make lawyers look straight forward and in definitions honest. They also on more than average occasions keep prime motivations as relative to themselves and their own inklings as they so desire and also critically undercut each other. Not at all unusual to do both at the same time. And just a bit less to their own hierarchies too. Duplicitous. It's delicious in placements. France, Egypt, England, Tunasia and more. I especially loved the narrations from different individuals upon the various French cities "feel". So pretentious and also IMHO- fairly dated and inaccurate. But it's brutal on occasion. Far more than just in the descriptive sense. Considering the body counts, I thought it rather droll that Kell is supposedly in a quiver over waterboarding! How self-rationalizing are humans! A Foreign Country is a poor attempt at international spy thriller that gets caught in its own idiosyncrasies, and never really develops either plot or characters. The really annoying thing is that the story really had potential, specially in the beginning! It all starts with an exciting trifecta: a kidnapping scene, a French couple gets brutally murder and there's a mysterious disappearance of the chief of Mi6. We, the readers, are led to believe that all these events will magically coalesce into an awesome harmony of events with thriller, action and high tech spying!

Spies, of course, struggle with the idea of loyalty more than the rest of us do. Most of us might have to struggle to choose between two friends who are divorcing. Who is my better friend? Who deserves my support the most? We don’t generally have to think about our loyalty to our country or ever have it really tested. Here in the United States, it is always interesting to me when someone expresses loyalty to their state over that of the federal government, as if the issues surrounding the Civil War still linger in the minds of those descended from those who fought over states rights. Loyalty to a state is a nebulous idea for me. State lines, arbitrarily drawn at some point in history, don’t really have importance to me. Of course, it is hard for me to see myself as loyal to the United States by dint of my birth. I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world who just happens to live in the United States. If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend,’ he thought, remembering the words of E. M. Forester, ‘I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.’After dialing the country code, you must dial the area or city code. This too can be anywhere from 1 to 3 digits and narrows down your call to a smaller geographic region within the country you are calling.

As you can see we dial the US exit code 011, followed by Brazil’s country code 55, then Sao Paolo’s area code 11, and then the local number 2345-6789. It’s that simple. In A Foreign Country the truth is revealed relatively early, putting the reader in the intimate position of watching the concluding events with the knowledge that it is extremely unlikely that the hero will be outwitted. Too early perhaps – once this point of intimacy with the story (not just the hero) has been reached, there is a tendency on the part of the reader to push on through to the conclusion. The details (which Cumming is very good at painting) become less relevant and can be lost in the desire to reach the end. The exact circumstances of the denouement have still to be revealed of course, but there is less of a sense of mystery. We have all the pieces of the jigsaw, and they’re all in the right places – just the edges are fuzzy. As an island nation in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean, New Caledonia happens to be a French country. The nation is an archipelago of five main islands, including Grande Terre Island, the Chesterfield Islands, the Isle of Pines, a smaller archipelago named Belep, and the Island of Grande Terre, where most people live. There are a handful of smaller, lesser populated islands scattered around the five prominent islands in New Caledonia.Now that you know how to make an international call, it’s important to know how to save money on the call. Calling internationally can be very expensive if you do not use the right carrier. There are, however, methods to find the best and cheapest carrier for each international call you make. One such method is known as international VoIP.

Regardless, I wrote a fairly long and gritty review for this book but in our current blizzard of the day conditions, the wi-fi cut out and it was lost. So now I'll just say it shortly. Which Charles Cumming never does, btw.Spies may begin their career out of loyalty to their country, or maybe for excitement, or maybe for the enticement of enrichment. As they do tasks for their country, they may discover that there are unsavory elements to what they are being asked to do. Maybe the line becomes blurred between who is right, or maybe it is more about who is most right. How about when your country asks you to do something, things go sideways, and then they hang you out to dry?

There are one hundred ninety-five countries in the world. It's impossible to live in more than one place at any given time, so wherever you currently reside is considerably your hometown, and everywhere else in the world is a foreign location, in relation to where you are at the moment.

The book is filled with wonderful, authentic information on spycraft. Kell breaks information apart and finds new strings to pull until he inches closer and closer to the truth. Patience is a virtue with spycraft. Sometimes a good spy has to let the action come to him before the motivations of all parties become clear. Nothing is ever quite what it seems. The devil is in the details, and the nuances might prove to be the key to getting one step ahead of those who are trying to destroy his chance to be redeemed. How many times will I have to read books that are touted to be written by "the successor to John Le Carre", and find myself disappointed? I guess it's not the writer's fault that the publisher chose to promote this work that way, and the New York Times agrees that this is Le Carre material. Yeah. I should know better. Never trust a book by its sweet cover. That'll always bite you in the ass!