“Agent Running in the Field” again swaps old characters and exploits for new players and present upheavals
WHEN JOHN LE CARRÉ’S third book, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold”, was published in 1963, it presented the world of espionage in a harsh new light. Spies were not brave, suave heroes. “They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too,” explains the flawed and beleaguered protagonist, Alec Leamas. They are “sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.” The novel preferred intrigue to adventure, gritty reality to escapist fantasy.
Two years after his previous book and 58 years after his first—and in the wake of a public spat with a former head of MI6, over the author’s jaundiced depiction of a service for which he once worked—his 25th novel again swaps old characters and exploits for new players and present upheavals. “Agent Running in the Field” is narrated by Nat, a 47-year-old spy for British intelligence—known not as “the Circus” of yore but, more prosaically, as “the Office”.
The plot thickens. Mr le Carré introduces Russians of various hues, from double agents to mafia kingpins. Operation Rosebud is superseded by the bigger, more fiendish—and, it turns out, politically sensitive—Operation Jericho. Increasingly sidelined, Nat embarks on a freelance mission to find out what is going on. To decompress he plays badminton with Ed, a “researcher” and loner who is as dissatisfied with his job as he is disillusioned with his country.
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