Cold War Betrayal in A LEGACY OF SPIES

A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarre revisits the uneasy days of the Cold War when British Intelligence mounted an operation in East Germany that went cruelly wrong.

In LeCarre's fictional world, the British spy agency is called the Circus. The novel follows a newly opened investigation by present day authorities into an early 1960s Circus operation with the code name Windfall. The events of Windfall were famously portrayed in the author's early novel The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

In this retrospective look back at what really happened in Windfall, old buried secrets are exposed. The novel is narrated by retired former spy Peter Guillam, who is called back to London to answer tough questions. Files about Windfall are missing. Things have been covered up. Lives were lost during the execution of Windfall. How much does Guillam know?

The novel moves between flashback events of the past spy operation and the current interrogation of Guillam. What is revealed are the cold blooded decisions that were made to sacrifice lesser British agents in order to protect a more highly placed undercover spy within East German intelligence. This is the author's sour commentary on the amoral compromises and personal betrayals that are always at the heart of any intelligence work.

A Legacy of Spies is a slow, thoughtful read, not a spy thriller. The novel will be appreciated most by long time John LeCarre readers, especially for the reappearance of familiar characters like spymaster George Smiley and Peter Guillam.

TWIN PEAKS Finale: What Does it All Mean?

The Twin Peaks revival series has ended, fittingly with a final scream of horror from Laura Palmer, just as the original series began with another scream.

The new series was uneven, with striking moments at times, and other scenes that seemed to add little and go nowhere. The series was overlong at eighteen episodes, where a tighter run of ten episodes could have been more compelling. Most enjoyable was the chance to return again to the town of Twin Peaks itself and reconnect with familiar characters, much older now, from the original series.

Key to understanding the storyline are some basic themes from director David Lynch:

1. The fluidity of time between past and future.

2. The link between conscious reality and dream world reality.

3. The existence of a transcendent evil force beneath the surface of the normal world.

4. The idea that individual selves may exist in multiple different time streams.

Twin Peaks is a surrealist narrative, driven by psychological/emotional meaning, not literal, conventional plot structure. This has the effect of floating through a disjointed, fragmented nightmare with no logical anchor.

The series ends with FBI Agent Dale Cooper returning to one happy time stream self as Douglass Jones with his family in Las Vegas. In another variation, Cooper finds Laura Palmer living as a different self in another time stream life and he tries to undo the events of her murder in Twin Peaks. The result is Laura's terrifying vision back to her murder that began the original TV series.

That final brilliant sequence was a fitting jolt back to the sinister mystery coiled beneath the placid, quirky surface of Twin Peaks.