John le Carre
Viking, $40, pbk
It is 50 years since John le Carre - David Cornwell - published The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (his third novel), one of his best in a genre he had made his own, and so of its time that whenever I re-read it, I am taken back at once to the dreary 1950s and the Cold War - a black-and-white world indeed.
Le Carre has always been one of my favourite commercial novelists, not just because of the intricacy of his plots but particularly because of the superb skills he deploys in writing them.
You cannot properly read a le Carre spy novel with the speed of your average airport fiction or summer holiday bonk-buster.
At his best, le Carre draws you into his story slowly, as into a web, and there you must remain entangled until the end when, with luck, you will emerge sated.
His stories are usually complicated, layered and invariably with double or triple unanticipated twists.
There is always a cleverer brain than his hero's, plotting moves from afar: as in all first-class espionage novels, every character is part of a larger chessboard.
His frequent narrative perspective is the omniscient view - very tricky to pull off successfully - able to enter the thoughts of all his characters, and so it is with his latest, Our Kind of Traitor.
As with all his post-Cold War fiction, it is as up-to-date with contemporary events as possible, in this case the Russian plutocracy with a price on its head and secrets to exchange for a safe life beyond the reach of Putin et al.
Perry Makepiece and Gail Perkins, 30-ish anti-Blair conscience-stricken lefties, he an Oxford minor don and she a London barrister, are on a tennis holiday in Antigua.
Lo and behold, who should they run into but the plutocrat money-launderer Dima and his bizarre family, along with assorted protectors.
They play tennis; Dima drops sufficient hints about his situation for Makepiece, back in England, to contact the secret services.
How the desires of all parties are resolved form the core of the story and I won't spoil it for you by explaining further, except to say the conclusion is darker than you might be expecting.
Le Carre is such a master at plot and narrative there is now quite a school of students who believe the writer uses his books to attack the class system in Britain - an attitude I personally very much doubt is his principal concern.
Certainly, many of his characters are stereotypes: the toffs who run the show, the privileged minority who fill the security services, the working or middle-class heroes and heroines called on to solve whatever puzzle le Carre invents.
I believe, rather, that there has always been a strong thread of idealism in his novels.
It is apparent in this one; what is also obvious is the rather flagging quality of much of the writing, less consistently good than in his better works.
Patience will be the novice le Carre reader's reward; enthusiasts will enjoy Our Kind of Traitor, no matter what.
- Bryan James is the books editor.
