The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: John le Carré

From the description at Goodreads:

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge.

I consider myself quite fortunate that I was able to go into the story knowing very little. It is hard to say that one enjoys reading a book with such a cynical, dark theme, but it is a great story and I am very glad I finally got around to reading it. And viewing the movie too, after all this time.

John le Carré writes so eloquently, and his writing engages me. He develops his characters bit by bit and pulls me into the story. Somehow I knew that this story would not be a happy one, but I kept hoping for some glimmer of a happy ending. The story was very suspenseful, but also filled with fear, distrust and betrayal. The last few chapters of this book were unrelentingly dark, and I was appalled at the manipulation of human beings in the name of the greater good.

The setting of Germany after the Berlin Wall has gone up was especially appealing. In le Carré's introduction to the edition I read, he talks about going to see the Wall as it was built... and how terrifying it was.

It was the Berlin Wall that had got me going, of course: I had flown from Bonn to take a look at it as soon as it started going up. I went with a colleague from the Embassy and as we stared back at the weasel faces of the brainwashed little thugs who guarded the Kremlin’s latest battlement, he told me to wipe the grin off my face. I was not aware I had been grinning, so it must have been one of those soupy grins that comes over me at dreadfully serious moments. There was certainly nothing to grin at in what I saw, and inside myself I felt nothing but disgust and terror, which was exactly what I was supposed to feel: the Wall was perfect theater as well as a perfect symbol of the monstrosity of ideology gone mad.

That brought back memories from my preteen years. My father was in a National Guard unit in Alabama that was called up to active duty for nearly a year during the Berlin Crisis. He left in October 1961 and was stationed in France for a few months and in Germany the rest of the time.  I don't remember how I felt about the Berlin wall going up; I only remember that it was a difficult year for me, my mother, and my sister and brother while my father was gone. It was two years later when this novel came out and I don't remember anything about the book from that time either, although I have read that it created quite a stir.

I read this book at this time because it is listed in many places, including John le Carre's web site, as one of the Smiley novels. Having read the first five of the Smiley novels, I can see now that there is no need to start at any one point, but I think I gained a lot from reading this book and The Looking Glass War before moving on to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The 3rd and 4th books feature Smiley only incidentally, but they show another side of him.

Here are a couple of posts that give an overview of John le Carré's books: at Tipping My Fedora and Mrs. Peabody Investigates.


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Publisher:   Pocket Books, 2001 (orig. pub. 1963) 
Length:       212 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       George Smiley novel
Setting:      Germany, UK
Genre:        Spy thriller
Source:      I purchased this book.

A Murder of Quality: John le Carré

I am currently working on a project to read all the Smiley novels by John le Carré. I read the first one, A Call for the Dead, eight or nine years ago and did not get to the second one until early this year. A Murder of Quality has much in common with the first book, in that both are really detective stories, and not spy novels at all. It was a surprise to me initially that the espionage element is missing but that made no difference in the end. Yet it is something that readers should be aware of if what they are looking for are spy novels.

Miss Brimley, editor of The Christian Voice, receives a letter from a subscriber, Stella Rode, the wife of an assistant master at the Carne School. She fears that her husband is planning to kill her. Brimley worked with Smiley during the war and knows he is not currently employed, so she calls and asks him to follow up on the accusation. Smiley makes an introductory call to the Headmaster at Carne and finds that Mrs. Rode had been murdered the previous night. He takes the letter to Inspector Rigby in Carne. Rigby, knowing that Smiley will have easier access to the staff at the school, asks him to aid in the investigation.

Some reviewers make a case that le Carré is writing more about British society and the class system than about espionage in all of his books, and I can see that point of view. Being from the US, I may not notice so much. This book is set in an academic setting, and in the introduction to the book, le Carré makes clear his hatred of that type of elite boy's school environment, based on personal experience.

From the introduction, written in 1989:

Rereading the book now, I find a flawed thriller redeemed by ferocious and quite funny social comment. Most of all I recognise the dankness of those old stone walls that formed the limits of my childhood and left me for the rest of my life with an urge to fight off whatever threatened to enclose me.

Le Carré is one of those authors that I can read just for the way he tells the story. I am not saying that I can do without any plot at all, but the plot is not the main attraction. Le Carré does characterization very well but most of the people in this novel are extremely unlikable. The school environment is a closed society, and the relationships between various members of the faculty and their wives are competitive and strained at best, sometimes adversarial. I was rooting for some of them to be the murderer, they were so horrible.

I am now reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In late January I read The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and more recently The Looking Glass War. Both of those books are very grim. Even though those books feature Smiley for just a minimal amount of time, I think they add to the picture I have of Smiley going into Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

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Publisher:   Walker & Co., 2004 (orig. pub. 1962) 
Length:       152 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       George Smiley novel
Setting:      UK
Genre:        Mystery
Source:      I purchased this book in 2007.

Once Upon a Time X: Reading Fantasy, Folklore, and More

(Art by Melissa Nucera)

The Once Upon a Time Challenge, hosted by Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings, takes place during the months of spring. Carl has been hosting this challenge for ten years. He describes this event thusly:

This is a reading and viewing and gaming event that encompasses four broad categories: Fairy Tale, Folklore, Fantasy and Mythology, including the seemingly countless sub-genres and blending of genres that fall within this spectrum. The challenge continues through June 21st and allows for very minor (1 book only) participation as well as more immersion depending on your reading/viewing/gaming whims.

Check out the post for Once Upon a Time X to read various options and suggestions for participation.

The option I have chosen is The Journey. I want to participate but not commit to reading a specific number of books.

These books were on my list last time but did not get read:

• The Black Company by Glen Cook
• Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams
• Land of Dreams by James P. Blaylock
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
• Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook
• The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

Other possibilities are:

• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin (2nd book of the Earthsea trilogy)
• Declare by Tim Powers (blends a spy story with fantasy)

I may also read some short stories if I find that they fit in with this event.

A Red Death: Walter Mosley

Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins is the protagonist in a crime fiction series by Walter Mosley. The fourteenth book in the series will come out later this year.  The first book, Devil in a Blue Dress, was set in 1948 in Los Angeles, California. That book was followed by A Red Death, and picks up five years later.

After the occurrences in the first book, Easy Rawlins has come into a large amount of money, and he has used that money to buy some apartment houses. However, he keeps his ownership secret:

Everybody thought I was the handyman and that Mofass collected the rent for some white lady downtown. I owned three buildings, the Magnolia Street place being the largest, and a small house on 116th Street. All I had to do was the maintenance work, which I liked because whenever you hired somebody to work for you they always took too long and charged too much. And when I wasn't doing that I could do my little private job. 

On top of real estate I was in the business of favors. I'd do something for somebody, like find a missing husband or figure out who's been breaking into so-and-so's store, and then maybe they could do me a good turn one day. It was a real country way of doing business. At that time almost everybody in my neighborhood had come from the country around southern Texas and Louisiana. 

People would come to me if they had serious trouble but couldn't go to the police. Maybe somebody stole their money or their illegally registered car. Maybe they worried about their daughter's company or a wayward son. I settled disputes that would have otherwise come to bloodshed. I had a reputation for fairness and the strength of my convictions among the poor. Ninety-nine out of a hundred black folk were poor back then, so my reputation went quite a way.

For me this book was not an enjoyable read, but I learned a lots, both about Walter Mosley and about the black experience in this country in the 1950s. In addition, it portrayed the time of the Red Scare in the years following World War II. I was a child in those times and just vaguely remember the fear that was instilled in children at that time, but haven't read much in fiction about the persecutions that resulted.

I did not know that Mosley is both Jewish and black. His father was black and originally from Louisiana. His mother was Jewish and her family immigrated from Russia. I am sure that his background informed the story of A Red Death. One of the main characters is Chaim Wenzler, a Jewish man who is active in the black church in Easy’s neighborhood. An IRS agent threatens Mosley with jail if he doesn't pay the taxes on the money he used to buy the real estate. An FBI agent promises to take care of that charge if Easy will spy on Chaim Wenzler. Craxton (FBI Agent) is sure that Wenzler is a Communist,  and wants Easy to find proof. Easy doesn't want to spy on anyone and especially not in a church that many of his friends attend, but he does not see that he has much choice.

When I say the read was not enjoyable, I am certainly not criticizing the writing. However the story is very dark, gritty, and violent. Although Easy solves most of his problems in this book, there is no happy ending. It just wasn't a pleasant read, but I am very glad I read it.

In a review for Rose Gold, the 13th book in the series, Ivy Pochoda talks about the secondary characters in the Easy Rawlins series:

Every Rawlins novel can be read on its own, but it's a far richer experience to read them in sequence and follow Easy's complex evolution as well as that of his ad hoc family and tight circle of friends. These are the folks who provide a fascinating set of roadside attractions as Easy's case rolls on. Mosley doesn't let anyone slide; everyone, no matter how minor, gets full billing.

Pochoda notes in the review that Easy's "slick criminal pal Mouse" is the best character in the novels.

Reviews:

• My review of Devil in a Blue Dress
• Margot at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist... has written an In the Spotlight piece on The Red Death.
• A review at Hipster Dad's Bookshelf

The question now is what will I read next by Walter Mosley. I have the next book in the Easy Rawlins series, White Butterfly. I have Fearless Jones (the Fearless Jones series), The Long Fall (the Leonid McGill series), and Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (the Socrates Fortnow series). I am curious about the other series.

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Publisher:   W. W. Norton & Company, 1991
Length:       284 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       Easy Rawlins #2
Setting:      Los Angeles, CA
Genre:        Historical fiction / Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy.

"Fire Burning Bright" by Brendan DuBois

I was very lucky to find The Dark Snow and Other Mysteries by Brendan DuBois at our local independent book store. I did not recognize the author but I already have several short story collections from Crippen & Landru, so I thought it was worth the gamble. Now I have found a new author and want to read more of his book length fiction too. Not that I need any new authors on my shelves.

"Fire Burning Bright" was a selection for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge, when I drew the 5 of Hearts.

This story is set in a rural area in a northeastern state. The protagonist, Jerry Auberg, had been an editor for various big city newspapers but had decided to move to a smaller town and purchase a weekly newspaper. By the time of this story, he has lived there five years and is beginning to feel settled in and accepted by his neighbors.

As the story opens, Jerry, who narrates the story, is going out to the scene of a fire that has just started. He reflects on the situation leading up to the fire. The town and the surrounding areas have been plagued by an arsonist, and it has had a bad effect on the town. People are suspicious and distrustful of their neighbors. The ending snuck up on me. It was very sad and affecting.

This short story was first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the Winter 1989 issue. It was also included in The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories, 1990, edited by Edward D. Hoch.

Brendan DuBois published his first short story in 1986 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. There is a very nice introduction in The Dark Snow and Other Mysteries where DuBois talks about writing short stories in the science fiction genre for years before he finally got one published in a mystery magazine. Since then, most of his published works have been in the mystery genre. In 1994, his first novel, Dead Sand, was published. It was the first in a series about Lewis Cole, a former Department of Defense research analyst, retired in a small coastal town in New Hampshire. He has also published standalone novels, one of which is the well known Resurrection Day, an alternative history about what happens after the Cuban Missile Crisis escalates into a nuclear war.

My list of short stories for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

Minute for Murder: Nicholas Blake

Minute for Murder by Nicholas Blake is my submission for the Crimes of the Century meme for the year 1947. I selected this book because the story was related to World War II. You would think just about any book written between 1940 and 1947 would have references to the war and how the war affected people and their lives, but that isn't true. This one was perfect in that respect.

The Crimes of the Century meme is hosted by Rich at Past Offences. Every month he designates a year and bloggers contribute a post on a crime fiction book (or film, TV, comics, or short story) published in that year. There is still time to join in for March.

The book opens shortly after V-E Day. Nigel Strangeways works in the Visual Propaganda Division in the Ministry of Morale. A war-hero (and former member of the division) returns to visit the group, and the director's personal secretary is poisoned at the office gathering to celebrate his return. Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of Cecil Day Lewis, who worked as a Publications Editor for the Ministry of Information during World War II, and used his experiences in writing this book.

In this excerpt from the book, Nigel ruminates on his former co-worker, the "improbable hero, Charles Kennington."

It was pleasant to reflect how many of his sort this war had thrown up. The long-haired, sensitive types, who had voted at the Oxford Union that under no circumstances would they die for king and country, and a few years later had gone up into the air with the professionals of the R.A.F. and helped win the Battle of Britain, fighting with the same skill and abandon as once they had speechified. The conscientious objectors, who refused to kill but performed prodigies of valor during the blitzes as members of rescue squads and fire brigades. The clever little dons, who vanished one day from their universities and were next heard of having dropped by parachute into occupied territory, organizing the resistance, dynamiting bridges, standing up to a firing party in a squalid backyard. The anonymous-looking scientists, who walked up to unexploded bombs and coldly took them to pieces, as though they were demonstrating an experiment in a laboratory, and generally were not blown to bits. ...

I have read some of Nicholas Blake's mysteries in the distant past but I wasn't sure I wanted to read more of them, with the exception of The Beast Must Die, which has a very good reputation. After reading this book, I know I want to find more of his books. Primarily, I liked the author's style of writing, although I have a few quibbles with this book.

Quibble 1: There is too much conversation at the end about the reveal of the culprit. Once the detective (in this case, the amateur detective) knows who it is, I don't want the denouement to be strung out.

Quibble 2: The portrayal of women. Not many women have roles in this book, and those that are there are not especially complimentary. There are plenty of secretaries and assistants mentioned towards the beginning but they fade away when the real detection gets underway. Maybe it makes sense in this context, but still, I noticed the absence.

Thus not a perfect book, but entertaining and a good depiction of the time period. I must be a sucker for mysteries set in the office environment because I also liked With A Bare Bodkin by Cyril Hare (set in another fictitious wartime Government office) and Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers (set in a publicity firm).

Some quotes from a review at PaperBack Swap:

He captures the tensions among different grades of staff and the problems of supervising talented but temperamental people. 

The material on the human factor and red herring combine to make this rather longer than the typical old-time whodunnit, but he’s such a charming writer that we don’t mind.

This review is also a submission for the Golden Vintage Scavenger Hunt in the "Blond (woman)" category.

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Publisher:   Perennial Library, 1985. Orig. pub. 1947.
Length:      261 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       Nigel Strangeways, #8
Setting:      Wartime Britain
Genre:       Mystery
Source:      Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2010.