An heir to Le Carre and Deighton
582022
American espionage novels tend to be about the hardware, British ones about the human factor. This one's more British. Dryden seems headed down the road of Le Carre and Deighton as he weaves  a fine tale,  the second involving Finn and Anna, he from MI-6, she from the KGB.

Finn is dead now, murdered by the KGB. Anna, his widow and mother of his child, has fled Russia and lives incognito in the south of France.

Incognito, that is, until freelancer Logan Halloran, once one of the CIA's finest but fired for someone else's mistake, gets a line on her - one he sells to several high bidders.

Anna must accept, for herself and her toddler son, the protection of Burt Miller, a wealthy private contractor for the CIA - the kind doing more and more of the agency's secret work.

What Miller wants is a secret he's not even sure Anna has - the identity of Finn's prize Russian source Mikhail, whom Finn destroyed his own career to protect, a top official close to Putin. Everyone wants Mikhail - the Americans for his information, the British to use as a trading chip for Finn's assassin and the Russians to kill him as a traitor. Thus they all want Anna and will apply any amount of pressure to get her to talk.

Dryden does an elegant job plotting as Anna threads the needle - deciding just how much to tell Miller, whether to give up Mikhail and how, how to go along with Miller enough to keep herself and her son safe, and meanwhile maintaining her own independence. Some of the best scenes are those in which she shakes Miller's experienced watchers just long enough to make unobserved contacts.

The cast of characters includes Finn's former boss Adrian, who had cast him out of MI-6; Anna's onetime lover Vladimir, still with the KGB;  the prized source Mikhail; the intriguing Halloran; and a mysterious, skillful assassin named Lars. Dryden gives everyone ulterior motives, so as the story winds on you have no idea who's doublecrossing whom because they all might be. It comes to a head in Washington on Obama's Inauguration Day.

Like the great espionage writers, Dryden makes it ultimately about the characters, navigating life wondering whom to trust when they can't trust anyone, and wondering how to live with choices made and things done in loyalty to states often undeserving of it.
1658208
This is a very well written book with well developed characters.  The story is engaging and the ending is highly satisfying and worth waiting for.  The characters show the same kind of moral ambiguity seen in Le Carre's best books.
709788
I tried reading le Carre years ago and always found him too dense. Someone recommended this book recently and I was not disappointed. Lots of plot twists, and still readable all these years later.
3051396
As a long-time fan  of the mystery novels of Robert Barnard, I can tell you that he has come up with yet another of his intriguing plots, full of twists and turns, feints and misleading hints. The tale centers on ex-actress Caroline Fawley, the mistress of the punning title: she is mistress of the grand house 'Alderley' as well as the mistress of a grocery-chain tycoon who set her up in that house.
One of Barnard's great talents is his eye for detail, and in this case some of the more telling details come from the world of opera, something that Barnard obviously knows and loves. Olivia Fawley, Caroline's eldest daughter, is a budding opera star making her Opera North d&eacute;but as Leonora in Verdi's 'La Forza del Destino.' An important plot point hinges on the timing, on opening night, of Olivia's appearances onstage.
There are vivid descriptions of Leeds, the novel's locale, just as  earlier in Barnard's career he infused his novels set in Norway with details of that country's milieu. One comes away with a lively sense of place.
In spite of his being quite a prolific writer, Barnard continues to come up with fresh ideas and produce effective character studies, both reasons I continue reading him.
Recommended.
Scott Morrison
3752379
Vivid and atmospheric, Le Carre's account of how George Smiley, the anti-Bond, nails the mole in British Intelligence headquarters, is a page turner. It begins slowly, with the arrival of a new teacher in a boys' prep school somewhere in Somerset, but then builds up to the unexpected climax. As a hero, George Smiley is unusual, but as a spy, he must have been a natural.
4106973
Father Brown is first introduced to readers as a kindly, clumsy little priest who prattles naively about the valuables he's toting, and keeps dropping his umbrella.

But appearances, G.K. Chesterton reminds us, are deceptive. "The Innocence of Father Brown" is the first collection of stories about the kindly, eccentric detective who has an uncanny cleverness that nobody guesses. Chesterton wraps each story in his warm, sometimes entrancing writing and a very odd assortment of crimes.

The first story opens with French detective Valentin on the hunt for the great thief Flambeau, and along the way encounters a little priest who is telling people about his "silver with blue stones." Turns out that the little priest is the target of Flambeau's crime, and the priceless sapphire cross he's carrying is about to be stolen -- but Valentin discovers that Father Brown is a lot cleverer than he seems.

In the stories that follow, Father Brown is involved in a series of strange crimes -- a cold-blooded beheading from religious bigotry, "a cheery cosy English middle-class crime" for Christmas, an Italian prince's invitation ends with revenge, a mysterious fall, a murderer in the open that nobody sees, precious gems, headless skeletons, and a suicide note that reads: "I die by my own hand; yet I die murdered!"

Chesterton's mysteries are often ignored next to Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, which is odd when you consider his uncanny knack for making mysteries that are simple, yet incredibly hard to figure out. And each mystery is accompanied by little insights into human nature -- such as the one man whom you could see going to a crime scene, but wouldn't notice.

The mysteries are usually written very casually and a little humorously, but with an oblique wall of clues that don't make sense until Father Brown reveals the motives. And Chesterton's crowning achievement is a writing style is absolutely exquisite ("Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea"), something that not many mysteries have.

Three characters are really important here: little gnomish Father Brown, whose innocuous appearance hides a shrewd knowledge of crime and evil. There's Flambeau, a master thief who is impressed by Brown's intelligence and understanding, and the rabidly bigoted French detective Valentin, whose dislike of Brown takes an unexpected turn early in the book.

"The Innocence of Father Brown" is a solid little collection of Chesterton's detective stories, starring one of the least likely detectives you could pick. Definitely a good read for mystery buffs.
3488932
Simon Gabb, self-made and immensely wealthy, has recently purchased Herons' Hall and its estate, thought to be the finest property in the county,  furniture, pictures, knick-knacks and all, at a bargain price.  It had sat on the market for two years: its scale was such that very few people could afford to maintain it, but for Simon Gabb this was not a problem.  Still, his brother James wonders if Simon and his family can ever be really comfortable in this huge house filled with another family's possessions; it's such a contrast to the small, dark Birmingham rooms in which he and his brother grew up.

Simon Gabb and his wife have three grown children: younger son Basil, married, though not happily, a diligent worker in the family gun-making business, now entering a new phase with an important secret government contract; elder son Giles, brilliant but erratic, who works only when it suits him; and daughter Jessica.  Since the family moved into Herons' Hall, Giles has devoted himself to outdoor sports and rarely appears without a gun or fishing rod in his hand.  He has become friendly with the young Lafortes, Arden and Billy, from whom Herons' Hall was purchased.  They had to sell when their father's death left them penniless, but now rent one of the lodges on the property.  When Giles brings them to the Hall for their first visit to their old home in three years, the Gabbs hardly know what to expect.  Mrs. Gabb is eager to welcome them, hoping they won't find the visit painful.  The Lafortes, all smiles, seem as much at ease as if they still owned the place.  During dinner a fierce storm develops, and Mrs. Gabb insists they stay the night.

Simon confides to his brother James that he is worried about the government contract: it appears some secret information has been leaked, but no one knows by whom or to whom.  It's all based on an invention of Giles's: he's the genius in the family, but mercurial and moody; his father wonders if Giles could possibly have sabotaged the project himself.  Or might he have inadvertently divulged something to the Lafortes, who leaked it in revenge for the loss of their house?  It's a mystery.

Since moving into Herons' Hall, Simon Gabb has become accustomed to taking a long solitary walk every morning down to the lake, Herons' Mere.  For the first time in his life he is learning to appreciate and enjoy the natural world; up until now his focus has been entirely on machinery and the man-made.  He bought the estate because it was a bargain, but only now is he beginning to recognize its true value. He even understands why Giles would rather be out-of-doors than work.  At the lake he peers into the boathouse: there, seated in the motor-boat, is his son Giles, dead, a gun propped between his knees and blood trickling down his forehead.

It is immediately apparent to the doctor and the police that the gun found with the body did not fire the fatal shot; it is a shot-gun, but he was killed by a single bullet; nor did he die in the motor-boat or even in the boathouse; a skilled marksman shot him from a distance.  Giles's parents are almost relieved that their troubled son did not kill himself, even though it means he was murdered..

I enjoyed this book a lot: it's less bleak, with more sympathetic characters, than some of her stories.  Superintendent Mallett is intelligent and competent, a large man with a gingery mustache and a personality to match: Still, it seems Mary Fitt was less interested in the solving of crimes than in the hidden motives that impel people to commit them.  Here she's also concerned with guns and their uses: characters range from vegetarian to gun-maker to big game hunter to murderer.
2035806
Neville's debut novel focuses on the search for the mysterious Montglane Service, a chess set given to Charlamagne which supposedly contains a formula that could bring about great destruction if it falls into the wrong hands. The Eight juxtaposes the search for this chess set by Catherine Velis, a mathematician and computer expert who also has a penchant for music in the 1970s with both digging up of this chess set from the Montglane Abbey where it had been hidden for hundreds of years and the dispersal of its pieces and their subsequent rehiding.

The book goes back and forth between time periods (1970s and 1700s), drawing in historical figures such as Talleyrand, Napoleon, Rousseau, Voltaire, Casanova, and Catherine the Great during the earlier time periods. Catherine Velis soon finds herself a piece in a larger Game, a chess game featuring real people, who are determined to protect the Montglane Service by keeping its pieces from falling into the wrong hands.

The novel is a multi-layered novel that will likely remind readers of both Dan Brown's Angels and Demons as well as the DaVinci Code as well as number puzzles of Umberto Eco. Some of the coincidences of the novel seem a bit too contrived, but Neville does an excellent job of interlaying history into a novel filled with complex twists and surprises. She also manages to weave some of the more interesting aspects of the history of chess into the novel as well while using specific chess strategies and moves to drive the novel.

Overall it was a pretty interesting read.
2319172
Time doesn't seem to pass for Le Carr&eacute;'s heroes as it does for mere mortals: the protagonist of this tale was a promising young spy in 1957 and is still going strong today, among other even more amazing temporal stretches.  And if you haven't read Le Carr&eacute;'s 1963 breakout novel _The Spy Who Came In From The Cold_ recently (nor so many times that you know all its details intimately), you might want to read that first to refresh your memory, for this tale builds mostly on that one, forming a fascinating new look at the Le Carr&eacute; world, tying up loose ends about many characters and seeing the original novel in a rather scary new light.  Le Carr&eacute;'s language continues to be straightforward and direct, even while describing a complicated plot or using the jargon of espionage.  It seems his recent books especially have flowed effortlessly as good _writing_ as set against _typing_ or _word processing_ or even _dictating_, for Le Carr&eacute; does not use a computer or typewriter or microphone.  Even a complex story, set at right angles to an earlier novel, was so well constructed that it was a very pleasurable overnight read.  Bravo!
2733963
Reviewers giving this book a poor rating seem disappointed that it is not a spy story with a fast-moving plot, or dismiss it as a poor pastiche of Graham Greene.  But surely Le Carre  -  creator of the inimitable George Smiley, the least Bond-like of spies  -  did not set out to write a novel about espionage, but rather about our ability to delude ourselves that what we wish to be true can, with a little effort and creative embroidery of the facts, become at least a serviceable replica of the truth.  (Reviewers expressing incredulity that British senior spooks and press magnates could wittingly or unwittingly lend themselves to this sort of deception might perhaps consult "Fiasco" or other books about the American neo-cons' self-interest or self-delusion leading directly to the invasion of Iraq, although personally I find Le Carre's characters much more attractive than the real-life Cheney or Wolfowitz.)  As for the debt to "Our Man in Havana", Le Carre freely acknowledges that this was what started him thinking  -  but Greene, even at his inspired best, never produced anything to match the sustained brilliance of East-Ender Harry Pendel's "fluence", a magnificent portrayal of someone who invented himself with catastrophic consequences to himself and all around him.  Forget preconceptions, forget that this is "another in the series of Le Carre's spy stories", just read it for pure enjoyment.
2000657
John le Carre is back on familiar turf, a layered espionage thriller pitting factions of British intelligence against the Russians. In OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, a chance meeting in Antigua plunges Peregrine "Perry" Makepeace and his girlfriend, barrister Gail Perkins in the role of amateur spies, suborned by a shadowy group operating on the fringes of MI6. While vacationing in Antigua, Perry defeats Dima, "the number one money launderer in the world" in tennis. Sensing an exemplar of British "fair play", Dima pitches himself to Perry with instructions to contact British intelligence with the idea of bringing his family to England for asylum. A changing of the guard for the vory, Russia's organized crime, has made Dima expendable. When his number two is slaughtered in Moscow, he knows his days are numbered. Perry, admitting that his life as a university don is not satisfying, and having the vague sense that he should lead a life more in keeping with rescuing the UK from the depths of becoming an also-ran on the world stage, takes on this assignment, a latter-day participant in the Great Game.

Enter the enigmatic Hector, a George Smiley-esque figure, alternately in good and bad odor within his own service. With his recruits, Luke, Yvonne, and Ollie, Hector runs Perry and Gail through their paces, slowly peeling back every scrap of their story. Dima can actually bring down a British MP, a shady attorney, and a rather smarmy former British naval officer, all in cahoots with the Russians to launch a rogue banking operation in The City. Antigua, London, Paris with the French Open and Roland Garros, and Switzerland as the backdrops, lend a comfortable international feel.

le Carre's command of nuanced dialog, of secrets kept and never shared, of the humanity behind the world of spying are present here in rare form. le Carre himself has become more jaded, more dismal in his view of the world. In his last few novels he has tackled rendition, the war in Iraq, terrorism real and fabricated, and big pharma. His America bashing, palpably present in his last four or five novels, is restrained to only a few ad hominem comments in this latest work.

While not in the league of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD or TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (in my opinion the best espionage novel ever written), OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is well worth reading. The characters are real, the banking scandals almost too fresh to examine in a fictional framework, and the sense of foreboding heavy. In le Carre's world there are no clear winners or losers, though a way of life and faith in humankind always suffer.
768979
I listened to this as an audiobook read by John LeCarre. Mr Le Carre's narration added enormously to my understanding and enjoyment of this novel.

Magnus Pym's story is told in a memoir format and involves multiple narrators in addition to Pym himself.  I suspect I would have found this format more difficult to follow in a written form but the author himself is able to navigate and narrate these multiple voices effortlessly.  The memoir is intended for Pym's son Tom, and traces Pym's rise and fall.

This is not, in my view, a traditional 'spy' novel.  It is far more complex than that.  The actions taken by Pym are only part of the story: the influences on Pym and his quite complex motivations are far nore interesting and intriguing.

I recommend this book (or audiobook) to anyone who is looking for a layer of psychological complexity to the traditional spy novel.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
2243008
I read this novel for the second time recently and having the purpose and plot of the novel clear in my mind all the extra dimensions in the novel immediately revealed themselves.  I previously saw Jerry Westerby as sympathetic but slightly pompous and contrastd with Smiley my opinion of him wasn't especially high (unlike other charactrs like Alec Leamas and Smiley himself) but then again contrasted with Smiley not many people really stand out.  However, Le Carr gets the balance right in this novel.  The balance between writing his characters out so well yet keeping the plot going at a good pace.
 Th Circus is a "sinking ship" wih Smiley as it captain.  Like a father, Smiley has to pick up the pieces of his broken children and put them back together.  Apart from the worry of rejuvenating the Circus, Smiley must also deal with his own past and with his own personal loves and hates including his unfaithful wife.  As such Smiley by day spends his time purging the Circus of the evils with which it has been infected by the mole (who was unmasked in the previous novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and by night takes long walks in a bid to purge his own devils.  These apart, Smiley must also battle the Whitehall barons and control a great operation in the Far East in order to capture two great Russian spies who are also brothers, an operation headed by Jerry Westerby.
  And what a character Westerby is, I realised on my second reading.  Le Carr describes his loneliness and the purpose behind his vices so well yet in such short bursts, we feel we are in the shoes of Jerry.  And despite knowing that some of his actions are wrong, we still will him to go on and feel that we would do the same were we in his place.
  The backdrop is described better than any novel I have read about the region.  Simply using this period and hopping around from war-torn city to war-torn city, Le Carr encompasses al the futilities of war without once morally judging them and speaks about sacrifice which is a major theme.  A newspaper (the name of which escapes me) described The Honourable Schoolboy as "simply on of the finest novels of the seventies" which is a fitting subtitle to the novel as it encompasses it and describes it all well.
Another issue which Le Carr brings to the forefront painfully well is that of the moral ambiguities of life and of the spy profession.  At the end of the novel, just before the prologue chapter, all of hiscomes into contex in the last few sentences of the chapter.  Westerby, Ko, Lizzie, Smiley, Luke all come into context as we imagine the scene moving in almost slow motion.
  It is very hard to decide but I feel that of all the Le Carr novels I have read, this is probably my favourite.  If you read it, you would know why.
4439477
Len Deighton is one of the great writers of aviation fiction and nonfiction.  He spends a great deal of time researching his stories and it shows in the final product.  His novel 'Goodbye Mickey Mouse' is not a great book, but it is a good book.  Deighton, in writing the book, seems to have been as interested in portraying the love lives of American aviators in England as he was in depicting the air war over Europe from the point of view of P-51 Mustang pilots. The result is a somewhat trite love story--brash American fighter pilot tamed by straightlaced English lass.  The other love story in the book is a bit more interesting because it is more original.  The title character, Mickey Morse, falls for an older married English woman, and this threatens his dream of becoming a celebrated fighter ace.  There are some good plot twists in the book, and most of the characters are interesting, but the best segments of the book are when Deighton focuses on the flying and the military politics.  This is where he shines as an author.  The romance element is no better-or worse-than what you find in any book on a newstand rack and read to pass time on a plane or on a trip. The most intriguing character is the main character, Mickey Morse (known as Mickey Mouse), who grew up at a gas station in Arizona and is trying to improve his chances in life by becoming a famous fighter ace.  He hopes to get a job working in the air industry after the war.  However, he is blinded by love for the older married woman, with serious repurcussions.  His friend, Jamie Farebrother, is the privileged son of a business tycoon who has become a general to help run the war effort.  His father, who is estranged from the son but trying desperately to develop a relationship, is also an interesting character.  The British characters are less well-drawn, which is rather surprising because Deighton is British.  They tend towards cardboard cutouts and stereotypes.  Even Jamie Farebrother's love interest Victoria is lacking in depth. That having been said, "Goodbye Mickey Mouse" is one of the best books I've read for getting a feeling for what life was like on a fighter base during the war.  As a historian researching the American air war over Europe, specifically the 8th Air Force, the book provided me with some valuable insights.  To be fair, I am not a big fan of romances and that element of the book didn't appeal to me; however, I think most people might enjoy the way Deighton develops the romances in the novel, and the way he weaves them together.  Some of the plot twists are a bit improbable, but hey, this is fiction, where the author, especially if he is established, can get away with that kind of thing. Overall, an entertaining book, well researched, but lacking in depth of characterization as well as probability.
2809481
John Le Carre's masterful novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, has all the elements one could ever want from a great spy story.  Le Carre brilliantly combines suspense, mystery, location, romance, and a story line that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page.
  Keeping with the tradition of all well-written spy novels, the action of Le Carre's book grabs the reader from the first scene, and doesn't let go.  Set in the midst of the Cold War in Germany, the author, a former spy himself, has no shortage of material to work with.  He uses it all in creating a brilliant story of a spy who finds himself a part of a complicated plan in a spy war in which all the things he thinks he knows turn out to be lies.  As this unwitting pawn in a dangerous game understands just how deeply the untruths he has been told run, the reader constantly finds himself wrongly guessing as to the extent of the circumstances the character is really in.
  The reader stumbles in this manner until the very end, when the whole thing finally makes sense and an unthinkable conclusion is drawn.  Here the brilliance of Le Carre's work realy shines, for the reader discovers he, just as the main character, has been led along a path of powerful deceit for the entire story.  For those looking for a great spy novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold truly has it all.
227983
John Le Carre has long been the master of the thinking person's spy novel.  The intricate crosses and double-crosses of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy are skillfully brought to a satisfying conclusion.  Do not expect the superficial James Bond plot with gratuitous sex and violence.  Do expect a journey through what the British intelligence service is probably like in reality.
4320138
La Carre at his best with a cliff hanger spy saga.  As always his characters are a bit quirky and complex.  This plot takes many twists and turns guaranteed to keep you turning pages.