See, reading John le Carré paid off

Posted: 2025-05-19

Or, my journey in espionage book land thus far.

(Note: this post contains a little spoilers for John le Carré's novels. I won't reveal anything big.)

I like spy novels, in case you haven't noticed. Not that I really read a lot. But my to-be-read list is strong and growing.

It started in the summer of 10th grade going into 11th. We had a reading assignment for AP Language, which was to choose one book from a list. One of them was The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre. I was like, "hey, this looks nice!"

It was. That was when I found out that I loved these types of stories, tales of betrayal and paranoia and stuff. I read a couple more non-fiction books by Macintyre, like A Spy Among Friends (about Kim Philby) and Double Cross (about the deception campaign before the Normandy landing — oh Garbo, the OC creator to end all OC creators), but soon moved on to fiction ones. And how could anyone read spy novels without knowing about John le Carré?

I started with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which everyone recommended me to start with. It was great. I did not see it coming that twist at the end revealing how all the characters are just pawns being played around.

And then I went to his first book, Call for the Dead. Though people didn't like it as much, it was pretty great too in my opinion. Started from a mystery but later turned into a spy novel. The infodump at the end could've been dealt with better, though.

And then I read A Murder of Quality, which is still Smiley but a complete mystery with no spies inside. It was a little fuzzy for me, mostly because I didn't get how the murder was actually carried out; and besides, if I wanted to read great British mysteries I could just go for Agatha Christie or something. Speaking of whom, I had her Tommy and Tuppence series on my list too, because I heard that the third book in the series is a spy novel. LOL.

And then came the Karla Trilogy. I will never forgive myself for dumbass googling too much about Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy before I actually finished it and I GOT SPOILERED. I saw who the mole was. That was not fun. But even then, it was indeed a great book. Can't really say if I liked it any more than The Spy Who though, but the spoiling had something to do with that. I also watched the 2011 movie but with terminal face-blindness I keep forgetting which actor was supposed to be who.

The Honourable[1] Schoolboy was great too. Though the two hours I spent getting through the first chapter only to find that the entire chapter was just a bunch of journalists going mad and flipping into the Haven to find that the Circus had left Hong Kong was torture.

Smiley's People wasn't that interesting in comparison. My main problem is how that guy they blackmailed (forgot his name, sorry) was a little too stupid, which watered it down a little. Still, it was a great and solid conclusion to the trilogy.

And then I went back to fill the standalone ones published before. The Looking Glass War, published right after The Spy Who, if I remembered correctly, made people say "oh, so he's the kind of author who wrote one good book and the rest are all bad." I think it's underrated though. It's basically The Spy Who with its themes amplified. I could imagine, if you asked le Carré "why do you hate your job" or something, he'd say, "well lemme tell you a little story" and give this book to you.

A Small Town in Germany was amazing too. "I'll chase you and you chase me and each of us will chase ourselves." (It went something like that I just recalled from memory.)

The Little Drummer Girl was the last book I read. Took me quite a while to finish, but not because it was boring. Charlie's motivation to spy was a little hard to understand though. My favorite part about it was first when I figured out Kurtz's plan after intercepting Salim at the border. Which, may or may not be explained in the book and I may or may not be right, but it looks smart. Another favorite part was how everyone seems an actor on a stage, playing different parts under different names. Charlie, who was already an actor in the first place; Joseph was Michael and Becker; Kurtz could turn into Schumann and whoever he was in front of Ned and the British police (I forgot his name).[2]

I'll be starting on A Perfect Spy next. I honestly can't rank these books because I don't want to put any one near the bottom.

目前看过的勒卡雷书总：

Also I heard that le Carré's son is going to continue writing about Smiley. I hope he's good. Angelmaker is on my list, but I haven't gotten around to it. On one hand I'm happy to get more books, but on the other, I'm worried that he's gonna turn it into some cheesy franchise.

There is, of course, the frustration that always came with someone used to reading kids books reading something from the last century. A lot of language was hard to understand, and my reading time and comprehension was greatly impacted because of that. But that's already way better than those 1700's poetry.

I used to have to read in bed, or I couldn't even fall asleep. I'd been on my phone more lately, which is why I haven't been reading as much, and why it took me so long to finish The Little Drummer Girl. Throughout high school, all I ever read were Wings of Fire and John le Carré. Required reading in class don't count; I only read summaries of those. I did absolutely 0 preparation for the AP Lit test, and I rested all my bets on the last essay prompt being able to fit some le Carré book. One of the past prompts I saw was about dramatic irony. Damn, The Looking Glass War was full of it. Drummer Girl too. In the actual test, the prompt was about a character losing something and how they reacted. Damn! I wrote about The Spy Who and how Leamas lost Riemeck[3] and Liz.

The essay was downright terrible, I had no logic, and I forgot about the entire thing where Leamas hit Ford and went to jail. But it was better than the previous two. I'm flunking the test. Whatever.

I had read some books by other authors too, like Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene, which kind of inspired me to make a TIR story like that but in the perspective of a hapless guy targeted by whatever country's equivalent of the KGB. But I didn't have any ideas past that, so whatever. And Fatherland by Robert Harris, which was really neat. And there's the category of "I have no idea what happened in them and I haven't gotten around to rereading it," which includes The Ipcress File by Len Deighton and Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith[4]. And some others. Most of these definitely deserve rereading, especially The Ipcress File and Gorky Park since I read them but it was like I didn't at all, but I just have so many more on my list.

And true to my nature I also tried to find books written for kids, because you will want to read some of those after reading something like, IDK, most of the books mentioned above.[5] I found Spy School by Stuart Gibbs, and after enjoying maybe like the first five books and reading the rest simply out of inertia (and their synopsis are really catchy. If only as much thought is put into the actual contents of the books), I found out how the author is a total piece of shit and finally set my mind to ditch it. I'd still recommend the first book though, and only the first. I had also read some other series by the same author, mysteries rather than espionage, and they were to some extent enjoyable I guess. Still, he was pretty much ass.

You'd think I would've learned to move on from middle grade books after that, but no; I shall never learn a lesson. I found this other series, City Spies by James Ponti, and I started on the third book just because it mentioned China (they spent most of their time in Russia though) and it actually proved to be pretty great. Way better than whatever pile of garbage Spy School was. So into the list the series went.

(I also saw Mrs. Smith's Spy School for Girls. Gave up after one chapter. It sounds like it's written by a middle schooler.)

There is something captivating about espionage. The feeling of worldviews being formed around lies and half-truths, the drama of betrayal, an almost artistically beautiful portrayal of paranoia, who's in the light and who's in the dark, the struggle to gain control while falling into powerlessness, and the strategy of nations battling each other in the dark.

Anyways, I'll be back later with more books. I'm a horrible reader and writer so I don't end up having a lot to say about every book, but things turn long if I review a bunch of books in one post.

  1. LOL I spelled it in its original British spelling and Obsidian threw a spellcheck error. ↩︎

  2. It was also around this point I started playing Reverse 1999, and Charlie always appeared as Sonetto in my head. ↩︎

  3. LOL Why is Obsidian spellchecking Leamas and Riemeck? I even turned on German. ↩︎

  4. You won't understand my pain of googling every book to find its author. ↩︎

  5. I'd die before admitting English is my second language again because I had learned it the same way native speakers did. ↩︎

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