Book Thrill
A Delicate Truth
John le Carré, Viking
**** (4/5 stars)
John le Carré’s latest is a scathing depiction of a rampantly capitalist world where intelligence is just another commodity to be traded with little regard for national interest or ordinary lives.
A “privatised” British intelligence operation in Gibraltar goes horribly wrong. Toby Bell, the senior civil servant who finds out, must choose between conscience and duty, between justice and cover- up.
Fodder to Le Carré’s disillusionment is Britain’s stubbornly persistent class divisions — upper classes get the cream, lower classes carry the can. Key to this is what he describes as “the brand marks of the English tongue”, that bred-in-the bone ability of “the scenting British animal to parse the voice and hence its owner”, pigeonholing birth, schooling, likely politics and future prospects.
In the past 10 years, Le Carré has written a succession of angry dissections of modern capitalism. Compelling social treatises — albeit a tad hectoring — they are no longer the espionage novels for which he was once famed.
The torch Le Carré lit when he wrote the hugely successful George Smiley series, set during the Cold War, has been passed on.
The Double Game
Dan Fesperman,Corvus
***** (5/5 stars)
An evocative new novel that will delight any spy aficionado confirms that American writer Dan Fesperman is a worthy bearer of that flame. The Double Game, too, is rooted in the Cold War.
A spook-turned-novelist confides to young journalist Bill Cage that he once contemplated spying for the Soviets. Cage’s story creates a flurry of embarrassment but is quickly forgotten, until two decades later he receives anonymous hints that he should have dug deeper.
Following a trail of literary breadcrumbs — extracted from the great spy novels of the past century, including Le Carré’s — Cage sets off across Europe, where he grew up as a Foreign Service brat, piecing together a puzzle with increasingly dangerous implications. — William Saunderson-Meyer @TheJaundicedEye
Book details
- A Delicate Truth by John le Carré
EAN: 9780241965160
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- The Double Game by Dan Fesperman
EAN: 9780857893406
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