Mark Willen's Blog

It’s been too long since I’ve posted but I’ve been busy reading so many good books I couldn’t stop, and now I want to recommend the best of the group. I’m splitting the list between general/contemporary/literary fiction and mystery/suspense thrillers. A recent blog tour for my last book garnered a number of new subscribers, many of whom love mysteries as much as I do and I want to give them a reason to stick with me.

First the more general fiction:

Lucy by the Sea: I am an unabashed fan of Elizabeth Strout and have read everything she’s written, back to the marvelous Amy & Isabelle. Her latest is an all-too-accurate depiction of the first year of Covid, with Lucy and ex-husband William escaping New York City for Maine. A lot of the old characters reappear and they’ve all grown deeper, but what stands out is how well Strout has captured the feelings that overwhelmed so many of us in 2020. The downside is that maybe she did it too well. I didn’t like this quite as much as Oh William!, but it was close. If you didn’t read that one, treat yourself and read it first.

Quiet Chaos by Italian author Sandro Veronesi: My wife recommended this one and I’m so glad she did. In the opening scene Pietro Paladini saves a drowning stranger only to go home and find his wife died suddenly while he was at the beach. Wracked by guilt because he wasn’t there to save the woman he loved, he operates in a daze until the next week when he takes his 8-year-old daughter to school and decides to wait outside so she can see him from the classroom window. He comes back and does the same thing the next day—and every day after that, working when he feels like it from his car. Friends and colleagues visit thinking he’s crazy, but as they start unloading their woes, it becomes clear that Paladini is the only sane one. First published in 2005 and translated into English in 2011. (Don’t settle for the movie.)

Trust by Herman Diaz: The structure of Diaz’s new novel is more than a bit unusual—the story of a successful financial guru told in separate interlocking books by different authors with different perspectives on the protagonist and his wife. It will leave you thinking for a long time.

Companion Piece by Ali Smith. Every time I read Smith, I’m amazed at how much I can enjoy a novel while simultaneously feeling I don’t understand it. The plot of Companion Piece is easy enough to follow, but there’s a constant awareness that a lot is going on under the surface that is much harder to get hold of. It takes a lot of intellectual energy, but it’s well worth it. The story is set in the post-Brexit Covid era in the UK and focuses on a woman caring for a possibly dying father, but that doesn’t begin to describe this innovative short novel.

Also recommended: One Two Three by Laurie Frankel, Groundskeeping by Lee Cole, Barcelona Dreaming by Rupert Thompson, The Last Jew by Noah Gordon, and The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.

Suspense
A bout of Covid and the resulting isolation made me turn to my favorite mystery writers, beginning with John Sandford, who has to be one of the world’s most prolific writers (55 and counting). I began with Mad River, book six in the Virgil Flowers series. It’s full of intrigue and good writing, and Virgil has clearly come into his own as a multidimensional character—one you can love even while you recognize his faults. I also read The Investigator, the first in the new series about Letty Davenport, the daughter of Lucas Davenport, star of the Prey series. She’s a bit too perfect in this, but I’m confident she’ll grow and the improve as the series develops.

I also discovered an author new to me – Linda Castillo, whose Kate Burkholder series features a small-town police chief who grew up Amish but left the group. She’s repeatedly drawn back, called on whenever there’s a crime in an Amish community She’s a strong, fully developed character, and the books have the added benefit of teaching us about life in the Amish World. The two books I read and liked were Gone Missing and The Hidden One. I’m sure I’ll read more.

Restless by William Boyd is a spy story that is sure to remind you of John le Carré’s best. Set in 1941, it focuses on British intelligence operations aimed at the United States, with the goal of getting the U.S. to join the war against Hitler. Unraveled slowly and cunningly to provide suspense while reminding you of the moral ambiguities forced on those who protect national security.

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson: Not a mystery in the traditional sense but plenty of suspense and evil-doing. The premise is interesting: How would you feel if you saved someone from drowning and the person never acknowledged you—never even acknowledged the incident or its effect on his life? And what if the person was highly successful and very rich? Perhaps you’d just try to forget about it and move on. Or maybe it would gradually get to you and you’d feel the need to do something. That’s the question at the heart of Mouth to Mouth, and how it’s answered is a yarn that’s bound to surprise and make you wonder.

Also recommended: The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan, Enemy at the Gates by Kyle Miles, and Fair Warning by Michael Connelly.

I’d like to keep offering (and receiving) book recommendations. Please send me your favorites and if I use them in a future post, I’ll send you a free copy of any of my books (your choice, kindle or print). Send your ideas to mark@markwillen.com.

I don’t read a lot of essays and I don’t listen to a lot of audiobooks, but I make an exception when Ann Patchett is reading her own essay collections. The combination is perfect and I savor every word. The essays are so intensely personal and revealing and so honestly delivered that the audiobooks deserve a special kind of literary award.

So it is with These Precious Days, Patchett’s most recent collection of essays. Most of them have already appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Washington Post, and other publications, but the collection brings them together in a way that helps understand what moves and motivates Patchett, and why there’s no living author I’d rather have dinner with. I’m seriously tempted to drive to Nashville one of these days just to visit Parnasus, the independent bookstore she owns and manages, just for a chance to meet her.

These essays are as sharp and honest as those in an earlier collection I loved, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, but they are more serious, more intense, and more meaningful. Many of them deal with death, either deaths that have occurred or the fear of death that was brought home to all of us during the pandemic, which plays a significant role in several of the stories. But there is also insight into friendships and love and families and how the Covid lockdown has made us think of these things in a more precious light.

The more humorous essays include a wonderful treatise about her three fathers, Patchett’s decision not to have children and the way she deals with people who can’t understand the choice, a takedown of the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop MFA program, and her husband’s lifelong love of flying and near-death experiences. Karl, whom Patchett married after 11 years of dating, is a fascinating character in his own right (and he’s invited to dinner too). He's a doctor with a degree in philosophy, an uncanny ability to get things done, and a Rolodex of friends that always includes a person in a position to help when needed.

All the essays are wonderful, but the title piece, which is quite long, is well worth the price of admission. It begins with a sleepless night that leads Patchett to her study and a pile of manuscripts sent to her by publishers hoping she’ll write a blurb. On a whim, and despite her instinct, she picks up Tom Hanks’ short story collection and finds it surprisingly good. She writes the blurb, which leads to an invitation to interview him before an audience on his book tour, which leads to a friendship with Hanks and to a very special friendship with his assistant, Sooki.

Patchett decides to ask Hanks to read the audio version of her new novel, The Dutch House, which leads to an extended email relationship with Sooki, who eventually reveals she’s being treated for pancreatic cancer. By coincidence, a research study is under way in Nashville and Karl Patchett knows the people involved. Before long, Sooki is in the study and living in the Patchett’s basement, dealing with both the cancer and the pandemic lockdown that keeps her and Ann at home more than usual. The relationship that develops is remarkable, as is Patchett’s rendering of it.

Patchett writes in this essay, and really throughout the book, of her gratitude for the relationships in life—for her friendship with Sooki, for her marriage, for her three quirky fathers, and for the fortunate life experiences that have allowed her to do the things she wanted to do and discover the meaning in so many of her relationships. I know Patchett would have reached those conclusions no matter what, but there’s no denying the pandemic played a role in making all of us realize what’s important in our lives and what’s less so.

By coincidence, one of my book groups is reading The Dutch House for its April meeting. I started it last night and I already understand why Patchett thought Hanks would be the right reader. I’m looking forward to listening to the book after I finish reading it.

The Vixen
I always pick up a Francine Prose novel with trepidation, only because of the commandments in her wonderful 2011 guide, How to Read Like a Writer . Her rules include: read very slowly, assume the author chose every word for a reason, know that every mention of a book or a piece of music is laced with meaning, and assume every bit of dialogue is packed with significant clues about the character’s inner self.

That can be a tough order, but it paid off handsomely in reading Prose’s latest novel, The Vixen. While the novel has many comic elements, it is built on some serious ethical issues, including what boundaries ordinary people set for themselves when asked to do something unethical at work, either to keep a job or further their careers.

The novel begins on June 19, 1953, with the espionage trial of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Jewish parents of our protagonist, Simon Putnam, are appalled when the Rosenbergs are found guilty and executed. Simon is well aware of their hurt and indignation, so he faces a major dilemma a few years later his boss at a New York publisher asks him to edit a tawdry novel that turns the Rosenbergs into evil but comic dupes. As naïve as he is smart, there’s no way Simon can handle the challenge. The novel he’s asked to edit (really just to give it a quick once over to smooth out the rough spots), is called “The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic.” He soon realizes it’s a terrible bodice ripper that makes Ethel into a sexual predator and leaves no doubt of the Rosenbergs’ guilty. The publishing house Simon works for is actually known for championing the highest form of literary fiction, but it’s in desperate financial straits, and Simon is told that this blockbuster-to-be is a necessary evil to earn enough money to keep publishing the good stuff.

Prose has lots of fun quoting excerpts of the terrible novel, but it’s no fun for Simon, who soon discovers that the author is in a mental institution, which doesn’t stop him from falling in love with her. But nothing is at it seems.

The novel is both funny and meaningful, especially for anyone the least bit familiar with the publishing industry. And the twists and turns in the last third of the book are worth the price of admission.


Oh William!
Reading slowly and carefully is especially important if you pick up Elizabeth Strout's new novel, Oh William! I don’t think I’ve ever read a more intimate work of fiction—intimate in the sense that Strout has adopted a first-person voice that brings you closer to the narrative than I would have thought possible. It’s as if you’re the narrator’s best friend and you’re meeting over a few drinks and she’s just talking to you about her life, in that honest, show all your faults self that only true friends can do with each other. The narrator is none other than Lucy Barton, who appeared in two earlier Strout novels, and characters from other novels, including the Burgess Boys make cameo appearances.

The book is just remarkable in its casual tone, which is really deceptive, because the subject matter is quite intense. The novel is in the form of a fictional memoir and is presented as one long chapter (236 pages), but divided into much shorter sections, some as short as a single sentence. Marriage is the overarching theme, but there is so much more than that on Lucy’s mind.

One of Strout’s talents is her ability to take the ordinary events of life and present them with enormous understanding and insight. She has such a keen eye for how people live and love and lose and fear and get lonely and misunderstand others and are shaped by our pasts—and she hits so many of these right on the head that you have to sit up and take notice. And the marvelous way she uses language, including the pauses and false starts in conversation, are a joy to behold. I can’t say enough about this book. Just go read it for yourself.


The Plot
You can read a little more quickly (and in fact you can’t help but read more quickly) when you pick up The Plot , the bestseller by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Several of my friends recommended this for me because I’m a writer, as is the protagonist, Jacob Finch Bonner. But this is a book for readers as well as writers.

The novel opens as Jacob struggles to work up enthusiasm for the creative writing workshop he teaches in a low-level MFA program. He’s also struggling—failing, actually—to write his second novel, following a mildly successful debut that won more critical praise than Amazon stars. In short order, Jacob comes upon an idea for a remarkable new plot and when he writes that book a few years later, it becomes a huge bestseller. But something is not quite right, and while The Plot starts out as still one more novel about a failed writer, it soon becomes a roller coaster of a thriller. While the plot is clearly the thing (in every sense), it’s hard not to get caught up in Jacob’s personality and behavior as one who can’t enjoy his own success. He is an endearing but flawed character, richly drawn in a way that will make you feel all the anxiety he feels.

There are several big twists and turns as the novel progresses but ample clues to help careful readers stay engaged and draw their own conclusions. I was proud of myself for guessing the first twist—and the second—but like all good thrillers, there’s always another one around the corner, and every time you think you’ve figured it out, you discover there’s something you missed. Korelitz uses her plot to dissect writers and the publishing industry with a quite-sharp knife. But that’s part of the fun (even for a writer) and she clearly knows whereof she writes.

I’ve always been skeptical of books released after an author’s death. Too often they turn out to be written by another writer working from an outline or a brief start by the better author, frequently at the greedy pushing of heirs or a publisher. In a few cases, it’s been a novel that the author felt was inferior and not up to his or her standards and therefore unworthy of publication.

So it was with more than a bit of trepidation that I picked up Silverview, the novel published last month under the name of John le Carré ten months after his death.

I was persuaded by several factors. One is that I’ve been a fan of le Carré for almost five decades. Plus I knew that Silverview was completed, if that’s the right word, by his son, Nick Cornwell, a writer himself who included an afterward explaining the circumstances. It turns out his father specifically asked him to see the book through to publication, it was virtually complete and it had been revised by the author over several years. It wasn’t so much that le Carré didn’t finish it, it was that he intentionally held it back until after his death.

So I read it and I am so, so glad I did. There’s no doubt who wrote it and no doubt that it lives up to the expectations of le Carré’s fans.

Over the course of his distinguished career, le Carré mined the British secret service he once worked for to build the espionage novel into the highest form of literature, creating well-meaning characters devoted to country and service even when they doubted the morality and utility of what they were doing. In Silverview, he is back on his old stomping ground, focusing on a secret service that has truly lost its way and knows it.

The novel begins with a “civilian”—33-year-old Julian Lawndsley who’s made a quick fortune in the city and now has given up the rat race to buy a small bookstore in a small village. Soon, he is visited by the much older and very mysterious Edward Avon, a Polish émigré and (we soon learn) a former spy who has gone off the rails. Avon takes quick advantage of Julian to make him an unwitting accomplice.

The other main thread of the plot involves Stewart Proctor, head of domestic security for the service, who is on the trail of a traitor. As in most le Carré novels, the plot is complicated and a reader will have trouble following every twist and turn, but the plot is only there to illuminate the characters, their moral fiber, their devotion to country and service, and the doubts about whether any of it is worth it. And as always, there are marital infidelities, ignored or mistreated children, and secrets galore—all seen as the price of working for a service that requires complete loyalty, complete secrecy, and always the suborning of one’s personal life to professional need.

But to say Silverview is another great novel from le Carré is to tell only half the story. It is more than that. In its brevity (only 215 pages), it cuts close to the bone and the doubts of the characters doing her majesty’s bidding are exposed in sharper relief than ever before. In one wonderful scene, Proctor visits a married couple, both retired from the service, who had served as Avon’s handlers. After recounting years of espionage during the Cold War and in Bosnia, shedding light on so much of what it was like, they acknowledge that it was probably all in vain. “We didn’t do much to alter the course of human history, did we?” the husband asks Proctor. “As one old spy to another, I reckon I’d have been more use running a boys’ club.”

In his afterward, Nick Cornwall suggests—and he admits this is only his speculation—that his father held back the novel out of loyalty to his former colleagues because it does something that no other le Carré novel has done. “It shows a service fragmented: filled with its own political factions, not always kind to those it should cherish, not always very effective or alert, and ultimately not sure, any more, that it can justify itself. In Silverview, the spies of Britain have, like many of us, lost their certainty about what the country means, and who we are to ourselves.”

I don’t know whether Cornwall is right. It seems to me that many of le Carré’s earlier novels did that as well. The difference, perhaps, is that we readers, in our understanding of the world we now live in, have finally caught up to le Carré’s understanding and doubt. I tend to believe that’s what makes this novel strike a chord with enduring effect.

Nothing is what it seems. Remember that as you romp through Fredrik Backman’s latest gem of a novel, Anxious People.

The bank robbery that begins the book isn’t actually a bank robbery, and the resulting hostage situation that follows in an apartment across the street isn’t really a hostage situation, not to mention the rabbit in the bathroom that isn’t a rabbit or the toy gun that fires real bullets. Most important, none of the artfully drawn characters are who they seem to be, as you’ll discover when you get to know them.

Like Backman’s highly successful earlier novels, especially The Man Called Ove and Beartown, this is a character-driven novel with absolutely wonderful characters—all anxious (which is to say realistic), with human flaws that won’t stop you from ultimately loving and rooting for them. The plot–a kind of locked-in mystery comedy that I’d be too embarrassed to even try to summarize–is the vehicle for exploring the inner depth of the characters, or more accurately, what life has done to the characters.

They include the most incompetent bank robber you’ll ever meet, someone who only wants to steal enough money for a month’s rent; a kind, elderly woman who’s waiting for a husband who’ll never arrive; a father and son cop team who seemingly disagree on everything except what’s important; a pregnant lesbian couple worried about what life has in store for them; a hapless real estate agent; and…well, you get the idea. At first impression, they are comic caricatures of real people, but like in real life, that’s only true until you get to know them.

There are many moments in the novel when you’ll laugh out loud and many when you’ll be caught up short by Backman’s insight, wisdom, and understanding of people trying to find happiness in a crazy world. Backman is a genius at revealing uncomfortable truths, taking our secret thoughts and saying them out loud. In the midst of the chaos and humor, Backman surprises the reader with poignant observations about stress, marriage, parenting, the need to find a purpose in life and why some people just can’t.

There were moments in reading this novel when I got annoyed–there’s some unnecessary repetition and some of the jokes get tiresome–but Backman ties it all together in the end, making you understand there was a reason for everything he did. Nothing is random, everything has a purpose. My purpose is to give this book my highest recommendation.

P.S. If you haven’t had a chance to read my latest novel, The Question Is Murder, now’s your chance. The ebook version is on sale this week only (Aug. 31-Sept. 3) for just 99 cents in Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Apple and other ebook formats.

I’ve read a lot of crime fiction over the past couple of years–first because I was writing my own and lately because I’m trying to decide whether to write another. Three that I read recently are very different but all excellent, no doubt because the authors are skilled and experienced.

I’m happy to recommend all three:

Blood Grove is the 15th book in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. It came out this year but is set in 1969. Suffice it to say that Mosley and I are both old enough to have vivid memories of that time, and he captures it well, including the racial injustices we’re talking about now and should have been paying more attention to then. His writing is crisp and full of delightful images, and his take on the country at that time—damaged Vietnam vets, hippies, racism subtle and far from subtle—adds meaning to what is a good story.

Easy (short for Ezekiel) is a private investigator of the old school, and this novel fits the PI subgenre’s pattern. PI books generally feature a detective who is often a former cop or military vet, flawed, partial to booze, and capable of violence and humanity in equal parts. The first page typically finds him sitting in his office when a client bursts in to hire him, invariably telling only half the story. The detective is almost always reluctant to take the case but then relents, and then wanders around collecting information from seedy characters, calling in old, more violent friends, and stumbling over dead bodies. Mosley sticks to this formula, but he’s so good and offers so much more, you won’t mind it a bit.

If She Wakes is typical of the more modern psychological thriller, and Michael Koryta is as good at those (he’s written more than a dozen) as Mosley is with the Rawlins formula. It begins with Tara, a college student assigned to shepherd a guest speaker to a school event. From the start something feels wrong and by the time the first chapter ends, a car collision has killed the speaker and left Tara in a coma on life support. Abby, an insurance investigator (and former stunt driver) assigned to the “accident” is quick to realize something is out of whack and is soon running from and towards hired killers and mysterious government officials.

The story shifts between Tara’s and Abby’s points of view, with Abby’s part told in past tense, while Tara’s is told in present tense. It’s done so smoothly, you won’t even notice. That’s incredibly difficult (trust me, I’ve tried). When Tara wakes, she suffers from Locked In Syndrome, and one of the added benefits of the novel is learning about this condition, in which the victim is awake and alert but unable to move or communicate (except to the reader).

One of the challenges of writing a good thriller is that the plot invariably crosses into the unbelievable, but the author must hook the reader so he or she will go along for the ride anyway or without noticing. Koryta knows how to do this, and he’s also created two strong female protagonists, each fighting interior demons from the past. You’ll root hard for both of them. And then there is Dax, the hit man you won’t forget, not because of his violence but because he’s a victim fighting past demons of his own.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino is one of those books I never would have read if not for my wonderful book club. Higashino is perhaps the most popular crime novelist in Japan, and this book has won every award available. It was fascinating to read it along with the two mentioned above because it is so different.

The story begins with Tetsuva Ishigami, a high school math teacher, who has a giant but unspoken crush on Yasuko Hanako, though he’s too shy to speak to her. They’re next-door neighbors and when Yasuko kills her abusive ex-husband, Ishigami takes charge of hiding the crime. (No spoilers here because this happens in the first couple of chapters.)

What follows is a fascinating game of cat and mouse, with Ishigami using his brilliant, logical, math mind to go up against his old friend, an equally brilliant scientist helping the police. You’ll need to get past the idea that Ishigami will do anything for a woman he’s barely spoken to, but if you can do that, the mind game that follows will fascinate you. Ishigami is a unique character, and Higashino’s simple language (giving due credit to translator Alex O. Smith) creates a mood that is perfect for the chess-like mystery and for providing insight into an unfamiliar culture. The book is different from any American mystery I’ve read, and that only adds to its allure.

Summer reads (aka beach books) get a bad rap, the phrase often treated as a synonym for mindless drivel. But I can’t think of a better book to recommend for summer readying than Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews. It’s fun, easy lifting, and hard to put down. And yet, there’s a lot in in that will leave you thinking long after you finish. In other words, you can have fun while reading something worthwhile and thought-provoking.

The plot is unusually clever, and it’s hard to describe without giving too much away. The twists and turns begin not long after the prose and story have drawn you in. The first one caught me completely by surprise, and while I had a pretty good notion of the last big one, there are so many detours along the way that no one will guess them all (and it doesn’t matter if you do).

Here’s what I can tell you: The plot involves a writer whose first novel is a wild success, a bestseller soon to be a movie. The author uses the pen name Maud Dixon and insists on complete anonymity (yes, you’ll think immediately of Elena Ferrante, though unlike Ferrante, Dixon is struggling mightily to produce a second novel).

Because she can’t be bothered with day-to-day chores, she hires an assistant, Florence Darrow, who of course is sworn to secrecy. The setting allows Alexandra to give readers a peek inside the world of writing and publishing (hint; not that pretty).

The relationship that develops between these two women is complicated, to put it mildly, and one of the beauties of the novel is that readers will find both characters sympathetic, dishonest, evil, vulnerable and unreliable, depending on the moment. In this way it follows the trend in domestic thrillers like Gone Girl and The Last Flight. The reader is never quite sure who to believe at any given moment, much less who is the villain and who the victim.

Besides being a great and fun story with two flawed and realistic protagonists, the book offers an inside look at the New York publishing industry, examines what happens when a small town girl who was always the smartest in the room suddenly finds herself outclassed in the big city, and delves into the question of whether we can ever escape our past and become a new, completely independent person – a goal, I’d venture, many of us have toyed with at some point in our lives.

Soon after my new novel, The Question Is Murder was released, I was invited by Mystery and Suspense magazine to write a feature story examining the history and attraction of political mysteries, with a list of some of my favorites. Here are the first few paragraphs of that story, with a link for those who want to read the rest.

"What do love, greed, and envy have in common? They’re all great motives for murder. Check out any good mystery and chances are high that one or more of those qualities are behind the evil deed.

But lurking beneath those three motives is often something else—the lust for power, either power over an individual or a group. And it’s that lust for power that defines a political mystery. Politics, after all, is the art of getting someone to do what you want them to do—sometimes for noble causes and sometimes for selfish reasons, sometimes through persuasion or incentives, sometimes through blackmail or violence. And when neither reason nor threats work on those blocking your path, well, you just may have to get rid of them. And that’s the makings of a good political mystery.

Political power is hardly a new source of suspense and drama. The thirst for control goes back to the beginning of time, and we find it in literature as early as ancient Greece and through the Middle Ages. Shakespeare made a living off of it. Think of Julius Caesar or Macbeth. These were not political mysteries in the true sense because we knew from the start who was guilty, but no one did a better job than the bard when it came to examining the underlying hunger for power. Traitors like those who did in Caesar populate political thrillers to this day, and many authors are still trying to replicate the evil in Lady Macbeth, though no one has done it as well as Shakespeare.

Trying to date the modern political mystery is a fool’s errand, but I’ll give it a try by pointing to Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key, which was published in 1931. That was a time when political power was local, and muscle was the only kind of lobbying in vogue for the ward bosses who held it. Hammett’s violent scenes seem mild compared to today’s, but he knew when and how to use them to keep a plot moving.

Read More

When Mystery & Suspense magazine asked me to write an article about political mysteries for July posting, I immediately thought of one of my favorite novels, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré, who died in December. I pulled the novel off my bookshelf, thinking I would skim a few pages to refresh my memory, but within minutes I was hooked once again. The book, published in 1974, is the most remarkable achievement in le Carré’s remarkable career.

I ultimately decided the novel didn’t quite fit the article I was writing, but I couldn’t just let it go. I had to revisit it here. If you haven’t read it, you must. If you have, it’s well worth a second, third, or fourth look.

When the novel opens, George Smiley, who appears in many of the books le Carré wrote, is unsettled and unsure—having recently been ousted in a purge of the Circus, the British version of the CIA. But when it becomes clear there’s a double agent high up in the organization, Smiley is summoned and given the assignment to track down the traitor. Despite his mistreatment, Smiley answers the call of duty and proceeds to spy on his former colleagues, friend and foe alike.

Smiley has to be one of the greatest fictional characters ever created, staring in the greatest spy novel ever written. He’s an honorable man in a profession that requires treachery, a portly,  bookish man with a notoriously unfaithful wife, a slow-moving purposeful man who somehow looks dangerous just polishing his spectacles, a genius at deduction, and a clever interrogator. He never raises a hand or uses a weapon, relying solely on brain power to get where he needs to go. Think James Bond and then imagine the exact opposite.

Le Carré describes Smiley beautifully when he makes his first appearance on the rainy London day:

“Small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London’s meek who do not inherit the earth. His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting and extremely wet.”

But it’s not just Smiley. Le Carré brings all the characters—big and small, good and bad—to life with vivid detail. In one scene that has always stuck with me, Smiley heads to Oxford to visit Connie Sachs, the former head of research for the Circus, an elderly women with a remarkable memory who has also been thrown out unceremoniously.

“She was a big woman, bigger than Smiley by a head. A tangle of white hair framed her sprawling face. She wore a brown jacket like a blazer and trousers with an elastic at the waist and had a low belly like an old man’s….On a trolley were the tins she ate from and the bottles she drank from.”

Smiley plies her with the sherry he brought and listens while she spins her stories, waiting for her to remember something that will help him get where he needs to go. Her stories are long but he senses that somewhere in them is the speck of new information he needs.

“Patiently Smiley waited for the speck of gold, for Connie was of an age where the only thing a man could give her was time.”

And of course eventually he hears and recognizes that speck of gold he needs.

The plot of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is incredibly complicated and filled with strange terminology that is never explained and only sometimes gleaned from context (I still can’t define the lamplighters, one of many terms le Carré  invented). But the gist of the plot is clear enough, and the characters are fascinating, even when they are not doing anything.

The book spawned a British five-hour mini-series in 1979 that captivated millions of viewers. Alec Guinness is brilliant as Smiley and it is one of the rare instances when the book and film adaptation actually work to make each other better. I cannot read the novel today without seeing Guinness in Smiley’s chair, his ability to capture an emotion with a tiny lift of an eyebrow equal to le Carré’s ability to create a full character with a few terse phrases. There was a remake of the series as a big-screen movie in 2011 staring Gary Oldman (who has the audacity to be slim and stay fit swimming laps). The remake is akin to a cinematic war crime; the original can’t be improved, so why would anyone try? The obvious reason is to make it two hours instead of five, but that’s exactly the problem.

But don’t let me leave you with the impression that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is just a good story with fascinating characters. It is also a critical look at the class distinctions in British society and a study of the ethics involved in intelligence and other parts of government. In an interview back in 1968 about double agent Kim Philby, the obvious prototype for the mole in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, le Carré said Philby illustrates “the capacity of the British ruling class for reluctant betrayal and polite self-preservation,” adding that the British secret services are “microcosms of the British condition, of our social attitudes and vanities.”

That’s clearly the view that le Carré takes in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Whether it was accurate fifty years ago, let alone today, is for someone else to say. But it makes for an intriguing thesis in the best spy novel ever written.

When Mystery & Suspense magazine asked me to write an article about political mysteries for July posting, I immediately thought of one of my favorite novels, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré, who died in December. I pulled the novel off my bookshelf, thinking I would skim a few pages to refresh my memory, but within minutes I was hooked once again. The book, published in 1974, is the most remarkable achievement in le Carré’s remarkable career.

I ultimately decided the novel didn’t quite fit the article I was writing, but I couldn’t just let it go. I had to revisit it here. If you haven’t read it, you must. If you have, it’s well worth a second, third, or fourth look.

When the novel opens, George Smiley, who appears in many of the books le Carré wrote, is unsettled and unsure—having recently been ousted in a purge of the Circus, the British version of the CIA. But when it becomes clear there’s a double agent high up in the organization, Smiley is summoned and given the assignment to track down the traitor. Despite his mistreatment, Smiley answers the call of duty and proceeds to spy on his former colleagues, friend and foe alike.

Smiley has to be one of the greatest fictional characters ever created, staring in the greatest spy novel ever written. He’s an honorable man in a profession that requires treachery, a portly,  bookish man with a notoriously unfaithful wife, a slow-moving purposeful man who somehow looks dangerous just polishing his spectacles, a genius at deduction, and a clever interrogator. He never raises a hand or uses a weapon, relying solely on brain power to get where he needs to go. Think James Bond and then imagine the exact opposite.

Le Carré describes Smiley beautifully when he makes his first appearance on the rainy London day:

“Small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London’s meek who do not inherit the earth. His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting and extremely wet.”

But it’s not just Smiley. Le Carré brings all the characters—big and small, good and bad—to life with vivid detail. In one scene that has always stuck with me, Smiley heads to Oxford to visit Connie Sachs, the former head of research for the Circus, an elderly women with a remarkable memory who has also been thrown out unceremoniously.

“She was a big woman, bigger than Smiley by a head. A tangle of white hair framed her sprawling face. She wore a brown jacket like a blazer and trousers with an elastic at the waist and had a low belly like an old man’s….On a trolley were the tins she ate from and the bottles she drank from.”

Smiley plies her with the sherry he brought and listens while she spins her stories, waiting for her to remember something that will help him get where he needs to go. Her stories are long but he senses that somewhere in them is the speck of new information he needs.

“Patiently Smiley waited for the speck of gold, for Connie was of an age where the only thing a man could give her was time.”

And of course eventually he hears and recognizes that speck of gold he needs.

The plot of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is incredibly complicated and filled with strange terminology that is never explained and only sometimes gleaned from context (I still can’t define the lamplighters, one of many terms le Carré  invented). But the gist of the plot is clear enough, and the characters are fascinating, even when they are not doing anything.

The book spawned a British five-hour mini-series in 1979 that captivated millions of viewers. Alec Guinness is brilliant as Smiley and it is one of the rare instances when the book and film adaptation actually work to make each other better. I cannot read the novel today without seeing Guinness in Smiley’s chair, his ability to capture an emotion with a tiny lift of an eyebrow equal to le Carré’s ability to create a full character with a few terse phrases. There was a remake of the series as a big-screen movie in 2011 staring Gary Oldman (who has the audacity to be slim and stay fit swimming laps). The remake is akin to a cinematic war crime; the original can’t be improved, so why would anyone try? The obvious reason is to make it two hours instead of five, but that’s exactly the problem.

But don’t let me leave you with the impression that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is just a good story with fascinating characters. It is also a critical look at the class distinctions in British society and a study of the ethics involved in intelligence and other parts of government. In an interview back in 1968 about double agent Kim Philby, the obvious prototype for the mole in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, le Carré said Philby illustrates “the capacity of the British ruling class for reluctant betrayal and polite self-preservation,” adding that the British secret services are “microcosms of the British condition, of our social attitudes and vanities.”

That’s clearly the view that le Carré takes in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Whether it was accurate fifty years ago, let alone today, is for someone else to say. But it makes for an intriguing thesis in the best spy novel ever written.