Cumming's latest spy thriller, Typhoon, considers a clandestine CIA plot to destabilize China on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, but the story starts in Hong Kong in 1997.

Why Hong Kong in 1997?

1997 is a significant date because in July of that year Britain handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese. The book is about the decline of British influence overseas, the limits of American power and the rise of modern China.

Your descriptions of these places are very evocative. Did you go there for research?

I was only able to visit Hong Kong once, for about six days, and Shanghai for about two weeks in total. But I'd already written The Spanish Game, which is set in Madrid, and that gave me the confidence to set another story in a foreign setting.

Recent headlines about the suppression of Islamic separatists in the Chinese province of Xinjiang make the details of your plot seem eerily prescient. Does this surprise you?

Not really, because Xinjiang is a powder keg that's been waiting to explode for a long time. If you suppress a culture to the extent that the Han Chinese have suppressed the Uighurs, sooner or later they are going to fight back.

Will these characters, like British spy Joe Lennox, appear in any subsequent books?

I like the idea of catching up with Joe Lennox. He's interesting: very driven and self-assured, a first-class spy, but also a romantic and a loner. I'd like to write a book about the Chinese presence in Africa, and Joe could be at the heart of that story.

In some ways, your book might be said to be a tragic love story built on a spy novel structure. Thoughts?

That's definitely true. I was heavily influenced by what le Carré had done in The Constant Gardener. That was a book about corrupt business practices in East Africa, but it was a very moving love story as well. I wanted to try to replicate that in Typhoon.

Your espionage tradecraft rings true. Do you have any personal professional experience in the field?

Not in the field per se, but I was interviewed for a job by MI6 when I was 25, and I have some useful contacts in both MI5 and MI6.

What are you working on now?

My new book is called The Trinity Six. It's a modern spin on the Cambridge spy story. More than that, I can't say, but it will be published in 2011.