Author John LeCarre R.I.P

 British author John Le Carre passed away recently. He is widely recognized for moving the Spy Novel genre from the escapist thrills of Ian Fleming's James Bond into the gray, gritty realities of actual intelligence work.

Le Carre's characters often operated in uneasy situations of moral compromise where the lines of right and wrong were blurred in the name of expedience and national interest. The psychological pressures on LeCarre's spies took their toll over time, corrupting some into personal crisis, others into political betrayal of country.

These are the best of Le Carre's Cold War novels:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold  (1963)

Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy  (1974) - The uncovering of a Soviet mole inside British intelligence.

Smiley's People  (1979) - The defection of a top Soviet spymaster.

The Post-Cold War novels dealt with issues such as arms trading and the threat of Islamic terrorism:

The Night Manager  (1993)

A Most Wanted Man  (2009) - Vicious rivalry among American, British, and German spy agencies for possession of an Islamic defector. An overt example of the latent Anti-American streak that ran through Le Carre's fiction.

John Le Carre Gets Political in AGENT RUNNING

Agent Running in the Field is the latest novel by John Le Carre, the renown master of the international espionage novel. This new book is a smaller scale picture of a backwater British spy sub-agency called The Haven that deals with minor intelligence nuisances.

The story is narrated by Nat, a veteran agent network runner now close to being put out to pasture by his agency. Nat's cynical voice allows John Le Carre to show his own dry wit with much inside baseball description of the mundane daily workings of The Haven. The actual plot of the novel is very thin, with Nat reconnecting with a former agent asset, who has urgent new information about a Russian undercover operation inside Britain. A surprising revelation puts Nat under suspicion at his own agency.

Unfortunately, the novel goes off the track as author Le Carre uses the story to vent his own strident political biases against Brexit, the Tory Party, and the American Trump administration. Le Carre has often shown open anti-American disdain in previous novels (see A Most Wanted Man ) and he continues that nasty streak here.

 Agent Running in the Field  is almost a droll satire of spy agencies, but the novel is mainly a diversion for die-hard John Le Carre fans who share his leftist politics.

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.

OUR KIND OF TRAITOR a Tense Spy Drama

Our Kind of Traitor (new on DVD) is a gripping drama about the clash between honorable values and political corruption within the murky world of government spy agencies. The movie is based on a novel by John LeCarre.

British couple Perry and Gail are on vacation when they meet Dima, a flamboyant character, and a money launderer for a Russian crime syndicate. But Dima's gang is now controlled by a ruthless new boss who is eliminating the old guard and Dima fears he and his family will soon be assassinated. He wants to defect to Britain for safety, and he uses Perry as intermediary to help him do so.

Perry makes contact with British agent Hector from MI-6. Dima has information about high British officials who are in the pay of the Russian syndicate. Dima will provide those names in exchange for political asylum. Hector agrees, but he has his own agenda of revenge against a particular government official that he wants to satisfy at the same time.

The movie follows a tense operation in Switzerland as Perry and Hector's team try to get Dima and his family to safety, leading up to violent fight with the Russian gangsters at a safe house in the Swiss Alps.

Our Kind of Traitor is a chilling story of lies and betrayal, in which a Russian defector is a more honorable traitor than the politically corrupt traitors high up inside the British government itself.

NIGHT MANAGER a Sleek Spy Drama

The Night Manager is a taut, sleekly produced mini-series airing on AMC Cable network. The series is based on a novel by John Le Carre.

With the end of the Cold War battle between the CIA, MI-6, and the Soviet KGB, spy novelists like Le Carre had to find new plot subjects such as terrorism, multi-national corporations, and international crime. The Night Manager deals with an undercover operation by a British intelligence agency to bring down a notorious arms smuggler. In the process, corruption and betrayal are uncovered at high levels within both MI-6 and the CIA.

Other Le Carre novels have pursued similar post-Cold War intrigue:

Our Kind of Traitor - A British couple on vacation become involved with a Russian crime oligarch who wishes to defect, which draws the involvement of British intelligence. The movie version of the novel will be released this August.

A Most Wanted Man - A grim, cynical drama set in Hamburg, Germany. A wanted Muslim terrorist pretending to be an ordinary immigrant is hunted by competing American, British, and German agencies. Unfortunately, Le Carre's ingrained anti-American streak is on its nastiest display here. The movie version is available on DVD.