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.

Thriller Novel Classics - The Essential Reading List

Coronavirus Reprint - This list was previously published by this Blog. If you can get your hands on any of these classic titles, they make for great reading during the current virus shutdown.

Here's a list of classic novels that are essential reads in the Suspense Thriller genre. The list is generally chronological beginning with the modern day thriller advent in the 1960s. The Thriller genre is here defined as page-turner novels with strong action and suspense plot elements.

Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick - Nuclear War thriller envisioned, as a technical system failure brings the US and USSR to the brink of catastrophe.

Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel -  Political crisis thriller as the Joint Chiefs plot a coup to take over the American government.

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming - Best of the James Bond spy thriller series.

Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth - Assassination thriller plot played out against an international canvas.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton - Biological contamination crisis at a secret Nevada desert scientific facility.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey - the Big Heist thriller set beneath the streets of New York City.

Black Sunday by Thomas Harris - Terrorist plot to hijack a blimp and pilot it into Super Bowl stadium crowd.

Marathon Man by William Goldman - Best ever interrogation scene shudderingly enacted in a dentist's chair.

The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin -  Nazi Conspiracy thriller with a new, chilling science fiction angle.

Jaws by Peter Benchley - Natural Environment thriller at a seacoast resort town menaced by a Great White shark.

The Towering Inferno by Richard Martin Stern - Disaster thriller scenario as an unstoppable fire rages inside a giant skyscraper.

The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy -  Military thriller plays out as a Soviet nuclear sub crew attempts to defect to U.S.

Firefox by Craig Thomas -  Techno/Military mission as a U.S. agent tries to steal a high tech Soviet fighter plane and fly it out of Russia.

The Firm by John Grisham - Legal thriller sees a young lawyer join a law firm with secret organized crime connections.

True Crime by Andrew Klavan - Race against time thriller as a reporter tries to halt a wrongful execution.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - Follows chain of historical puzzle clues to revelation of a sensational religious secret.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - Swedish government conspiracy thriller with a hacker/punk female lead character.

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.

Thriller Novel Classics - The Essential Reading List

Here's a list of classic novels that are essential reads in the Suspense Thriller genre. The list is generally chronological beginning with the modern day thriller advent in the 1960s. The Thriller genre is here defined as page-turner novels with strong action and suspense plot elements.

Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick - Nuclear War thriller envisioned, as a technical system failure brings the US and USSR to the brink of catastrophe.

Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel -  Political crisis thriller as the Joint Chiefs plot a coup to take over the American government.

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming - Best of the James Bond spy thriller series.

Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth - Assassination thriller plot played out against an international canvas.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton - Biological contamination crisis at a secret Nevada desert scientific facility.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey - the Big Heist thriller set beneath the streets of New York City.

Black Sunday by Thomas Harris - Terrorist plot to hijack a blimp and pilot it into Super Bowl stadium crowd.

Marathon Man by William Goldman - Best ever interrogation scene shudderingly enacted in a dentist's chair.

The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin -  Nazi Conspiracy thriller with a new, chilling science fiction angle.

Jaws by Peter Benchley - Natural Environment thriller at a seacoast resort town menaced by a Great White shark.

The Towering Inferno by Richard Martin Stern - Disaster thriller scenario as an unstoppable fire rages inside a giant skyscraper.

The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy -  Military thriller plays out as a Soviet nuclear sub crew attempts to defect to U.S.

Firefox by Craig Thomas -  Techno/Military mission as a U.S. agent tries to steal a high tech Soviet fighter plane and fly it out of Russia.

The Firm by John Grisham - Legal thriller sees a young lawyer join a law firm with secret organized crime connections.

True Crime by Andrew Klavan - Race against time thriller as a reporter tries to halt a wrongful execution.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - Follows chain of historical puzzle clues to revelation of a sensational religious secret.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - Swedish government conspiracy thriller with a hacker/punk female lead character.

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.

Best Mystery and Crime Novels of 2012

2012 saw the release of some outstanding novels in the Mystery genre. Here are the picks by this Blog for best of the year:

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo - A chilling new entry in the series that features Oslo police detective Harry Hole. This one is a near-epic hunt for a serial killer who uses a fiendish device called the Leopold Apple on his victims. A gripping and psychologically complex narrative of Harry's obsessive pursuit of the killer. Jo Nesbo's novels are rich in character and twisted, big canvas plots. This crime thriller was the best read of the year.

The Black Box by Michael Connelly - LAPD detective Harry Bosch returns to investigate the cold case of a female journalist murdered twenty years before during the 1992 Rodney King trial riots in the city. As Bosch digs deeper into the death, seemingly mundane threads weave together to link to powerful people and a past war crime. A solid and methodical police procedural, with Michael Connelly writing at his satisfying best.

Defending Jacob by William Landay - Both a riveting legal mystery and a troubling picture of a family cracking apart under the stress of a murder indictment against one of its members. The teenage son of a Boston Assistant D.A. is arrested for the bloody murder of a classmate. Jacob insists he is innocent, but his worried parents face mounting doubts. The novel is a compelling, disturbing read with a hideous twist at the end. A can't-put-down plot and a tense moral puzzle. Outstanding.

The Expats by Chris Pavone - An intriguing tangle of deception and an innovative take on the espionage novel. A woman who is a retired CIA covert agent begins to suspect that her husband may be involved in a secret life of his own. When the couple comes under surveillance by someone, alarm bells begin to ring. The plot is full of unexpected twists as each layer of lies is peeled away both within the couple's marriage and their covert lives, which have been kept secret from each other. An unpredictable and thoroughly enjoyable spy thriller read.

Raylan by Elmore Leonard - Best outing in years for crime writer Leonard as he brings back his iconic character, fast-draw U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Here Raylan is up against canny, treacherous offenders in backwoods Kentucky coal country. Full of the author's trademarks of dead-on dialogue, oddball criminal types, and quick, lethal violence. An entertaining treat for Elmore Leonard fans.

Honorable Mention - Broken Harbor by Tana French, The Fear Index by Robert Harris, Driven by James Sallis.

THE EXPATS An Intriguing Tangle of Deception

The new mystery The Expats by Chris Pavone is an intriguing and surprising tangle of a married couple's lies and deceptions in their jobs and with each other.

Kate Moore is a retired CIA agent whose husband, Dexter, never knew about the sometimes violent kind of work that she did. Dexter himself is a high-tech bank security consultant, or at least that's what Kate thinks he is. The couple has recently relocated to Luxembourg for Dexter's work, and joined the American expatriate community there.

But while Kate hides her own secrets, she begins to suspect that Dexter may be hiding things of his own. When a new couple, the Macleans, arrive and seem to be keeping Kate and Dexter under surveillance, alarm bells go off in Kate's head. Could the Macleans be there after her, or is it her husband?

The plot is full of unexpected twists as each layer of lies is peeled away one by one. The Expats is an inventive mystery set within the borders of a marriage and played out against an international backdrop.

BEACH RATING: 4 Palm Trees