Mount TBR #33

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

Smiley’s People - John le Carré

At the start of this novel, set in the late 1970s, former British intelligence chief George Smiley has been retired for about five years. His old frenemy Lacon, however, has tasked him to investigate the murder of an agent put out to pasture. Evidence clearly points to Soviet assassination methods but the mystery lies in why knock off a long-retired spy. The hunt for the killers and their master gives Smiley the unexpected chance to defeat his Soviet opponent Karla, who ruined Smiley’s career and marriage.

The book is divided into 27 untitled chapters. Each contains its own set piece, with allusions to the first two novels in the Karla Trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honorable Schoolboy, which will puzzle readers who have not read them (not to mention spoil their stories).

The prose is a pleasure to read but the tone is gloomy. The morose tone makes the pace seem lugubrious at times. In contrast, in The Honorable Schoolboy the reader was left to infer the sorrow and the pity and be carried along swiftly with many exciting incidents in various locations. The construction of the plot, however, is not as tight as in The Honorable Schoolboy. That is, the steps that lead to the surprising finale are both too pat and slightly unclear. Later in the 1980s the author was better able to pull off a long, long set-up to preface unbelievable tension in the last third of The Night Manager.

So, this long complicated novel ought to be read only after reading the first two. It plausibly examines the world of secret agents and its long planning and waiting times. At the same time, it is a historical novel that brings the time of the late Cold War back to life. Interestingly enough, Le Carré refers to as far back as WWII as its main characters conjure up old eras in intelligence. This gives the book, as we read it in 2018, an exciting second level - you read in what is becoming an old novel  about how they remembered even older times. Important and curious are not only the details we remember about the past, but why we remember things the way we want to remember them.