Single & Single

by John le Carré

A lawyer from the London finance house of "Single & Single" is shot dead on a Turkish hillside by people with whom he thought he was in business. A children's magician in the English countryside is asked by his bank to explain the unsolicited arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust. A freighter bound for Liverpool is boarded by Russian coast guards in the Black Sea. The celebrated London merchant venturer "Tiger" Single disappears into thin air. In "Single & Single" the writer who both epitomizes and transcends the novel of espionage opens with a haunting set piece, then establishes a sequence of events whose connections are mysterious, complex and compelling. This is a story of corrupt liaisons between criminal elements in the new Russian states and the world of legitimate finance in the West. Le Carre's finest novel in years, it is also an intimate portrait of two one Russian, the other English; one trading illicit goods, the other laundering the profits; one betrayed by a son-in-law, the other betrayed, and redeemed, by a son.This is territory le Carre knows better than anyone. Masterful and prescient, he is writing at the height of his creative powers, and Oliver Single, the central protagonist, is one of his most fascinating characters.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Espionage, Mystery, Spy Thriller, Crime, Audiobook

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

John le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), was an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré had resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Great Britain, for more than 40 years, where he owned a mile of cliff close to Land's End.

Reviews

[Left Coast Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I once met a guy whose job was running a production line for the little squeeze-sprayers of perfume bottles. I’ll admit that these little squeeze sprayers (or atomizers, to give them their proper name) were something I’d never given much thought to, and I may well have responded with something dismissive and assholish when he mentioned it.

“They have to be able to survive 100,000 cycles up to twenty-six times atmospheric pressure,” he continued, “and be resistant to all sorts of solvents and corrosives, and we have to build them for three cents.”

I learned, once again, that my fields of ignorance are vast, more numerous than the sands of Arabia, and that any time I start feeling superior, I get smacked down sharply.

One thing I do know, though: LeCarre understands exactly how it happens. How men lead themselves astray, how we are fools for love, how we make bad decisions (without which, of course, life really wouldn’t be worth living at all). I’ll need to quote at length here:

(Oliver, a decent man from London, finds himself in the home of the Russian gangster Zevgeny.)

Iron gates open before them, the escort peels away, they enter the gravel forecourt of an ivy-covered mansion teeming with yelling children, babushkas, cigarette smoke, ringing telephones, oversize televisions, a Ping-Pong table, everything in motion. There is a blushing cousin called Olga, there is Yevgeny’s benign and stately Georgian wife, Tinatin, and three—no, four—daughters, all full-bodied, married and a little tired, and the prettiest and most doomed is Zoya, whom Oliver with a kind of aching recognition takes instantly to his heart. Female neurosis is his nemesis. Add a trim waist, broad maternal hips, a large, inconsolable brown gaze and he is lost. She nurses a baby boy called Paul, who shares her gravity. Their four eyes examine him with forlorn complicity.

“You are very beautiful,” Zoya declares, as sadly as if she were reporting a death. “You have the beauty of irregularity. You are a poet?”

“Just a lawyer, I’m afraid.”

“Welcome,” she intones with the profundity of a great tragedienne.

Yevgeny walks them to a brand new BMW motorbike that stands pampered and glistening on a pink Oriental carpet at the center of the drawing room.. With his household crowding the doorway—but Oliver sees mostly Zoya—Yevgeny kicks off his shoes, climbs onto the beast’s back and revs the engine all the way up, then down again and shines out his delight from between matted eyelashes. “You now, Oliver! You! You!”

Watched by an applauding audience, he hands Shalva his tailor-made jacket and silk tie and springs onto the saddle in Yevgeny’s place; then demonstrates what a good chap he is by setting the building shuddering to its foundations. Zoya alone takes no pleasure in his performance. Frowning at this ecological mayhem, she clutches her son to her breast, her hand protectively over his ear. She is straggle haired and carelessly dressed and has the deep shoulders of a mother-courtesan. She is alone and lost in the big city of life, and Oliver has already appointed himself her policeman, protector and soul companion.

Like most of LeCarre’s books, there’s fierce criticism of the world’s millionaire parasites and corrupt public servants, an array of memorable characters, and a nice tidy plot to keep things moving. But that lightning strike to Oliver’s heart is, to me, what makes the book so haunting, so recognizable and so rewarding. (And which makes our hero so very, very screwed -- not a spoiler.)

Five stars for any other author, but because it's a LeCarre and not among his very best, my judgement is more demanding. But this is a very enjoyable read, make no mistake.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.
-- John le Carre



I wish I could claim credit for the catchy title/phrase: The spy who came back to the bank., but it has Mr. Moneyball written all over it.

After reviewing Our Kind of Traitor, I kept being drawn back to Single & Single, a le Carré I read last year, but never actually got around to reviewing. Both Single & Single & Our Kind of Traitor are part of le Carré's banking/black-market brand of post-Soviet spy fiction. Certainly not everyone's Jam, but being a finance guy myself, I kinda dig 'em.

Anywho, this is one of those post-Cold War, pre-Iraq war novels where le Carré emerges as not just the grand master of spy fiction, but as perhaps the grand master of both the Cold War and the Ambiguous Thaw. He was noticing in the late 90s what a lot of the rest of us only figured clearly out a few years into the War in Iraq. Those who are guarding the BIG secrets, might not be the most trustworthy people around.

I love how le Carré plays around too. He isn't just angry, he is also clever and confident. Part of me really wants to believe that in the beginning of Single & Single, the gun that both exists and doesn't exist seems like a twist on Chekhov's gun. Let's call it Schrödinger's gun. Ladies and gentlemen of the court, this gun both exists and it doesn't. This gun that shows up in Scene I has already gone off, or perhaps it hasn't. No need for Chekhov no need for Chekhov's gun. Everyone please keep your juried seats. As the big C once said, "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." During this stage of le Carré's career, it seems like THAT is all he wanted to do. Break promises. Break with the past. Show you the gun, and the write a whole book about ignoring it.

[Quirkyreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I was torn as to give this book 4 or 3 stars. And 3 was the best choice. The reason being is that the beginning of the story seemed muddled to me. And it took a while for me to get into the story line. Other Le Carre books have caught me right away, but this one didn't.

Once I did get into it, the story had a better flow and I enjoyed the plot line.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow burner with lots of conversation and little action until the last quarter or so. Nevertheless, I enjoyed its labyrinthine plot as it weaved from one richly drawn character to another. The end was exciting but strangely dissatisfying. On the other hand, perhaps it’s clever because it left me thinking through what the ramifications would be of what had happened. Le Carre isn’t telling us in any detail so we have to think for ourselves which is never a bad thing, is it?

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Splendid. To say it is his best later book is to damn it with faint praise. It is just a darn good example of what Le Carre does so well, writing about the English and the Russians. He lost his way when the Cold War lost its way. Here he is back in that world he understands and loves and it makes all the difference.

I see this book has underwhelmed many, but I fail to see why. Unreservedly recommended.


'He's a bastard' says Oliver at one point. To which the Swiss banker replies:

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...

[Jarmby · Rating 2 out of 5]

Single and Single was a difficult read .
Le Carre writes a story here that is difficult to follow. There were too many gaps in the narrative that the reader had to deduce or conclude .
Whilst this is very much his style , Single and Single pushed the boundaries of endurability .
The main characters were unconvincing bordering on caricatures and the story they were portraying was mediocre
I was glad to finish this book

[Barbara K · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I didn't know better, I would think that I'd chosen this book because the plot rests on a period of Soviet history that was key to another book I've recently read, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. Both reflect the economic impact of perestroika, followed by the August 1991 coup that essentially ended the Soviet Union, rearranging the power positions of previously key systems and players.

There's also the fact that one of the principal characters in this book is known as "Tiger" Single. I suppose that could have sent a subliminal signal, but I think the truth is that I was skimming my list of unread le Carrés, and the first paragraph of the publisher's summary of this one just caught my attention. I was curious about how le Carré would tie together three seemingly unrelated events in different parts of the world.

The answer is brilliantly, as always with this author. I can't say that I enjoyed it quite as much as the Smiley books, but fans of le Carré will know that it would be impossible to replicate everything that Smiley represented, so some disappointment is to be expected.

Our Smiley-equivalent in this case is a customs agent determined to bring to justice a corrupt English financier (the aforementioned Tiger Single) who launders money and in another ways facilitates the activities of wannabe Russian oligarchs. His tool to accomplish this is Tiger's son, Oliver, who, having become disaffected by the extent of his father's avarice, informs on him with consequences that take some years to unfold.

So, all the standard elements of the best le Carré novels, but with the twist that we are shown elements of those Russians (Georgians, actually) that are somewhat appealing. Not really a spoiler, just a lengthy aside: In another one of those strange connections, during the course of the book, one of Oliver's lovers attempts to teach him Georgian, including the beauty of their alphabet. As it happens, I was recently involved with a project evaluating locations for a research program based on, among other things, language translation challenges. I learned that Georgian has its own alphabet, not used anywhere else. Those very human qualities are one part of the reason for Oliver's betrayal.

For Oliver, you see, is soft, not hard like Tiger and most of the Russians. He falls in love frequently, and makes decisions based on emotion rather than reason. He trains as a children's magician, absorbing skills that serve him well at a critical point in the book:

“The magician was coming alive. The illusionist, the eternal pacifier and eflector of ridicule, the dancer on eggshells and creator of impossible karma was answering the call of the footlights. The Oliver of the rain-swept bus shelters, children's hospitals and Salvation Army hostels was performing for his life and Tiger's, while Tinatin cooked, and Yevgeny half-listened and counted his misfortunes in the flames, and Hoban and his fellow devils dreamed their sour mischief and pondered their dwindling options. And Oliver knew his audience. He empathized with its disarray, its stunned senses and confused allegiances. He knew how often in his own life, at its absolutely lowest moments, he would have given everything he had for one lousy conjurer with a stuffed raccoon.”

Recommended to all le Carré fans.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that I was a bit leery of late-LeCarré, without the Soviet-Britannic spy games. Like many, I’d been spoiled by Smiley and what I’d read afterwards was a bit disappointing but this book adapted well to new themes. Money-laundering and the drug trade had replaced espionage, the new capitalism from the ex-Soviet states – in this case, Georgia. (By the way, for anyone who thinks of Georgia as just another ex-satellite, look up their alphabet; what the hell is THAT?!?!?! Great cinema, though…)

The early threads were difficult to follow in this story but they came together quickly. Basically, the British financial institution of Single & Single works in the money-laundering business, offering financial assistance through the setting up of shell companies and off-shore bank accounts to hide discretionary (a.k.a. illegal) income. Nothing out of the unusual here, we all know it’s done - it was difficult for me in the book to follow how it was being done but the fault was mine – with restaurants that never seem to have customers, hotels that never seem to have guests, etc. In this case, it starts with a holiday resort in Turkey and revenge (or a message) for some deals which have gone sour because someone has leaked. The next chapter features a mysterious magician for children’s parties, separated from his wife and daughter, who lives in a seaside residential hotel. The two threads come together pretty quickly, though, and this is when the fun begins because it felt like old times with the spy games of the past. There are complicated lines to follow, shaky alliances shifting as different parties jockey for position, no one exactly sure where they stand, who’s with them and who’s stabbing them in the back. These even comes into play between the sheets as secret liaisons which have no business taking place, take place anyway (and maybe are not all that secret anyway) and possibly throw it all off kilter.

There’s another Smiley-esque twist to this as the agent in charge of the operation to dismantle this particular financial scam admittedly has no hope of ending this type of corruption completely; as he says, even if the war was fought for a thousand years, it would be impossible to win. His focus is on one player, and this reminded me of other LeCarré novels where you can win individual battles but never win the war. (Unlike those glamorous novels where spy- and crime-rings are smashed for good.) I liked this book much more than I’d expected to; my faith in LeCarré has been restored!!!

[AppleJuice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first John Le Carre novel. I usually pass them by, regarding them as boys' books - spies, murder, submarines/guns/planes and boring chase scenes. But one night I was out of books and so desperate for something to read that I scooted over the bed and grabbed the first book I saw on my husband's night stand, fully expecting it to put me to sleep with boredom.

I read half of it that night.

The first chapter is darkly funny, the second full of pathos and introduced some very sympathetic characters and the rest of the book carried the story along very satisfyingly. New-lawyer son of a big-time lawyer to shady characters discovers his father's business is even dodgier than he thought. He chooses to take action despite his love for his father, and these are the consequences.

Very believable, a very emotionally resonant and female-reader friendly take on the usual shallow bloke book. Highly recommended.

[Hugh Ashton · Rating 5 out of 5]

To my mind, this is the finest of le Carré's post-Cold War works. His outrage against the crooked British establishment is apparent through the words and actions of his protagonist (and, one suspects, his alter ego) Nathaniel Brock.

His ear for dialogue is retained, whether it be in the mouth of the antihero of the story, Oliver Single or his super-rich crook of a father, the bent coppers and officials who serve them, the former intelligence operatives of three countries, the sleazy Swiss lawyer, or even the once-glamorous but now fading mistress of Oliver's father. It is instantly apparent from only a few words exactly what class of person the speaker belongs to, and where their interests lie.

Oliver is perhaps a little predictable as a le Carré hero. He is constantly in two minds over his actions, he has a past which includes the love of an unsuitable woman and a present which includes the love of a more suitable lady. As in all of this writer's novels, betrayal, lies and treachery form the basis of the relationships between the main characters, and even the characters one assumes to be on the side of the angels can display horns and a tail at times.

For me, the story was entirely credible. I had very little difficulty in relating to the characters, or to the plot. Although the plot deals with the sins of the stinking rich, a group of society to which I do not belong, it still appeared to me from what I know of these people that their descriptions here are repulsively accurate.

The fact that the Cold War has ended in no way invalidates or makes irrelevant John le Carré's continued skill in plotting, characterisation or dialogue, or his sense of justice.

[David Highton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this Le Carre book, a complex creation of international crime and corruption, witness protection and a secret service task force seeking to prosecute corrupt British public servants. Oliver Single is a great fictional creation of a character and his story is well served by Le Carr's usual excellent writing and by the clever structure of the book. The different initial strands do not start to form together until quarter way and then a mix of current narrative is interspersed with flashbacks to five years earlier, followed by a galloping finish

[Pawanraj · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts off well.. The first chapter is super reading. A lawyer is murdered by the gang-of-"entrepreneurs" he was working for. Oliver, who is a (former) colleague of the dead lawyer gets involved. He races against time, the establishment and his own morality to try and save his father (and boss) from suffering the same fate.

The story is mostly flashback, as Oliver, has given up on his previous life as a hot-shot lawyer for the Russian "mob". He returns to it, to save the father. The story is predictable, the action is okay, and the protagonist is fairly sketchily detailed, and some strokes are a bit too broad.

The climax is a bit of an anticlimax, and it all ends too quickly and feels incomplete for all the build-up to it.

Not exactly le Carre's best work.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

For nearly anybody else writing these days, this would be a slam-dunk winner. Large canvas and well-developed set of characters that shift and grow with the unspooling of the narrative. Nicely varied set of scenarios, scenery, and atmosphere.

But Le Carré has set the bar too high and when this one hits the doldrums midway, it is nearly lost. All the elaborate mechanisms that are set up in the first third of the novel kind of coast and sputter a bit in the middle section. It doesn't take on a life of its own.

When this is noticed and Le Carré kick-starts the endgame proceedings, it's just a touch too late to rescue the ship. I do think there is the reliance on the eventual sale as A Major Motion Picture --such a holiday-bonus in the past-- that creates a false cushion for things like that mid-section transitional stage...

If the movie is only going to comprise about 100 pgs of a 300+ pg book, why worry the tiniest details...

Well, because for some people the book may matter more than any movie version.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This LeCarre thriller opens with the reader dropped into the middle of a riveting scene on a hilltop in Turkey and played out to its predetermined conclusion. Alfred Winser, the chief legal counsel and board member of the finance house of Single and Single is summarily executed but not before LeCarre has taken the reader into Winser’s head as he spins through pictures from his past life and watches as a man produces a video camera and another aims a pistol in his face. From here, the reader must place this frame in the context of the larger story that follows.

We are introduced to Tiger Signal, a bold venture capitalist who owns and runs a British financial institution. Although it appears to be an investment bank, its owner is actually working with dummy corporations around the world and laundering money. The business was built by Tiger who brought in his son Oliver as a partner once he graduated from law school. Tiger hopes that one day there will be a third Signal to join the firm and when he makes ten million pounds in a single day, he promises his son he will give half of it to his grandchild the day that child is born. Tiger delivers on that promise when the time comes, but the sum is five million and thirty pounds, the additional thirty pounds an important part of the gift.

We meet Oliver Hawthorne, a children’s magician who has just learned that his daughter Carmen’s trust fund has been credited with a large sum of money by way an anonymous deposit made in London. The authorities in auditing, alerted and naturally curious about the deposit, question Oliver and his lawyer closely about where the money originated. But Oliver is more distressed by two other matters. He now knows his father has located him years after he fled the family business and hid himself away in a small coastal community where he now lives a quiet life. And the sum deposited includes an additional thirty pounds, not part of the original gift his father had promised him, a not so subtle illusion to the thirty pieces of silver once collected by Judas for betraying Jesus.

The timeline of the story shifts back to the nineties when Oliver first joins his father’s firm after law school. Tiger is in the process of taking advantage of the emerging era of Perestroika as the former Soviet Union collapses and movers and shakers are poised to welcome and develop potential business opportunities. The Russians are eager to enter emerging new markets even if it means exploiting the resources in their own country, their eyes glued only to the massive profits to be made. Tiger Single, always ready to go where others fear to tread, has made contact with Mikhail and Yevgeny Orlov, brothers who are poised to develop projects in scrap iron, oil and relief blood. He selects Oliver for his first big project asking him to begin working out initial arrangements with the Russians. Oliver, anxious to please his father, heads to Moscow where he meets Yevgeny Orlov and his right hand man Alix Hoban, a man he dislikes and does not trust. Hoban is married to Yevgeny’s daughter Zoya, but he virtually ignores her and Zoya and Oliver quickly become lovers.

The deal collapses during the attempted Soviet coup in 1991, but Tiger undeterred by this setback, sends Oliver out again to develop new projects. Things seem to be getting back on track but after hints from his lover Zoya, Oliver learns the Orlovs are now part of an organized crime syndicate and his father’s firm is laundering their money. He informs on his father to Nathanial Brock , a senior officer with the British Customs and Excise service. Brock is a member of an inter service task force investigating the massive network of black market trade and domestic corruption in Britain and has slowly been amassing evidence to convict a number of corrupt British officials who have been aiding and abetting international crime. Among them is Bernard Pollock, a long-time friend of Tiger’s and his accomplice in many of his illegal activities. After Oliver spills the secrets he knows, he quickly disappears. But now several years after his conversations with Brock, with the deposit in his daughter’s account, Oliver knows his father has tracked him down.

Brock contacts Oliver to tell him his father has disappeared after a series of setbacks at the firm. They include the boarding of the large freighter Free Talin by the Russian Coast guard who found the vessel loaded with drugs. The result is a multimillion dollar loss by the crime syndicate that now wants their money back. Brock believes Tiger is in danger and wants Oliver to help find him. He tells Oliver he is prepared to give Tiger immunity if his father will give him enough information to bring down the network. Oliver’s nagging sense of responsibility and guilt over turning his father in years ago leads him to accept Brock’s offer and he agrees to help.

As Oliver begins his search for his father he finds out more about his illegal business dealings. But to find him he must first figure out what has happened in the business since he left his father years ago and what caused his disappearance. He soon realizes why Brock was so alarmed and knows his father faces certain death at the hands of the Russians unless he saves him. It is during the process of looking for him and putting together the information that reveals what his father’s business was all about, that Oliver begins to realize his father was never the brilliant dealmaker and businessman he had thought him to be.

Tiger is presented as a domineering, arrogant and ambitious con man, ready to skirt around whatever legal loophole he can find to build his illicit wealth. For him, the profit motive is king. He is not very likeable but his character is more developed than even that of Oliver his son, the focus of the novel.

This is the often mined narrative theme of father/son conflict, as a son questions his father and turns against what he stands for. Oliver gives up a heady lifestyle for what he believes is right, but in the end cannot abandon his father completely and risks his life to save him. It is one thing to betray your father but quite another to stand by and let him be murdered.

LeCarre describes this work as “the anguished relationship between errant father and trapped son”. In later editions of the book, LeCarre admits that this father and son story has its origins in his own life. He had idolized his father as a brilliant businessman until he discovered his father was involved in the black market during the war. Like Oliver, he had similar feelings when he discovered his father was not a success at all, simply a con man who did well.

LeCarre pulls the reader into the shadowy world of informers and double agents. He slowly builds the tension moving back and forth in time as he mines the two separate story lines of Oliver Hawthorne (formerly Single) a children’s magician and married with a daughter Carmen, to the world of Tiger and Oliver Single in the heady and dizzy world of high finance in London.

After his international spy stories, author LeCarre is back in his comfortable groove doing what he does well, exploring themes of deception, suspicion, loyalty and betrayal in this well plotted story of a son who betrays his father in order to save him.

[Helen]

I love John le Carre. I really, really, really do. (Check my other reviews.) But for this book, Single & Single, my rating is...eh.

As a novelist, it is your job to make your story so believable that your audience will suspend their disbelief--or invent their own explanations--in the places where the plot runs thin. Which was a problem in this book.

Like a mantra, in the last 50 pages of Single & Single, I found myself yelling at the book over and over again, "What??? This is the Russian Mafia! You couldn't have said this line, because they would have killed you and your whole family by now! Hell, they would have killed you four years before this stuff even happened!"

But I love John leCarre. I don't want to end this review on a negative note. So, instead, I'll end this review with a recommendation. Check out the lesser-known gems that are The Looking Glass War or A Small Town in Germany.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the early 1990's and the Cold War may well be over (for the time being, anyway) but John le Carre just can't leave Russia alone. And why should he? What with all those oligarchs dismantling the old apparatus of the Soviet state and untold, underhand billions to made out of oil, iron and blood.

Not metaphorical blood either. Real blood.

The House of Single is London's foremost financial company with its fingers in the new pie. Tiger Single, its founder, is determined to get his fair share of the blood money. Then a very special employee gets moral compulsions and comes clean to HRM Customs and Excise.

So, no spies, but worry not, le Carre's crooked businessmen talk and act exactly like his spies, use the same lingo and are just as conflicted and unpredictable in their behaviour. So much so that at times I thought I was rereading An Honourable Schoolboy.

Also, like everything le Carre writes, it's utterly gripping from start to finish.

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always pay attention when reading a Le Carre novel and this one is no exception, its subject is money laundering, the Soviet Union transitioning from communism to a kleptocracy and the relationship between a dodgy father and his son. The second chapter is almost a bit too much of a jog round the houses but Le Carre never tells you anything you don't need to know.

It is not his best novel and there are times when you weary of stock characters that always seem to pop up in a le Carre novel, in this one more of them are given too much space. But it's still a good read, perhaps for die-hard fans.

[LeastTorque · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I hadn’t set a goal of reading every book by this author in the order written, I would have abandoned this one early on. A masterful opening chapter degenerated into a slog that took me two weeks to finish. I wasted a ridiculous amount of time avoiding this book.

My guess is that this variation on his father’s conman nature was too personal for him and threw him off his game.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, written with the USSR recently dissolved, John Le Carré was his typical cynical and pessimistic self, looking ahead to the rise of Russian oil moguls and former apparatchiks turning into arms traders, drug dealers, and money launderers... all with the help of profiteers in the West, of course.

Single & Single is the financial house of the protagonist's family. Oliver Single is the son of the legendary "Tiger" Single, who has built on empire on dirty deals all while maintaining the profile of a very proper, prestigious London money merchant. Oliver is a disappointment to his father — he has scruples. He's not a shark, and he'd really rather be an artist than a banker, but he winds up in the family business anyhow... annoyingly asking pertinent questions about legalities and ethics. Every scene with his father is a wry, cynical delight, as Oliver says "But, but, you can't do that!" and his father, not missing a beat (but seething inside) applauds his candor and directness and very proper reservations before paving them over with bullshit.

Unfortunately, Tiger Single is dealing with a family of Russians (actually, Georgians) who are looking to get rich by picking the corpse of the former Soviet Union. This goes bad places... oil and gas, of course, but also weapons, drugs, and in one bizarre scheme, literal blood money. Then when the sudden but inevitable betrayal happens, Tiger gets blamed and disappears. And Oliver, dutiful son that he is, goes looking for him. Along the way, there are dalliances with hot Turkish women, romantic difficulties, family matters, and of course, British Intelligence trying to do something vaguely in the interests of Her Majesty's government while being full of operatives not much less dirty than the scoundrels they hunt.

What makes John Le Carré so excellent is that he lays out the most complex schemes with a dozen different parties all involved, pursuing their own particular interests, the schemes are complex and multilayered, the double and triple crosses come fast and furious, the characters are all wry and witty and never more than a grayish shade of white when not black-hearted villains, and yet it all comes together in a coherent, believable plot. Reading this novel was like watching a juggler toss a collection of balls and knives and flaming torches into the air and wondering how he's going to bring them all safely to earth, and damned if he doesn't do it.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in May 2003.

Oliver Single begins a promising career in the legal department of his father's banking company, only to gradually realise that its fortunes rest on the laundering of money for organised crime. As the company's biggest partnership, with "entrepeneurs" in the disintegrating Soviet Union, takes shape, Oliver makes the fateful decision to betray his father to the authorities. This part of the story is told in flashback; the main plot of Single and Single is about what happens when Oliver's father tracks him down in his new identity supplied by the security services following the murder of one of the bank's employees by the Russians.

Single and Single is not the only le Carré novel to revolve around a complex father-son relationship; in this respect, as in tone and structure, it is reminiscent of The Secret Pilgrim. The moral ambiguity of the characters is also, of course, a trademark of le Carré, and, as in The Secret Pilgrim the imperfections of both father and son fuel not just their relationship but the whole novel. However, Single and Single is prevented from being among the better le Carré novels because its long flashback is not really very well executed; compared to the main plot, it is dull and unconvincing. The Constant Gardener is the best of le Carré's latest phase, leaving this as worth reading for fans.

[F.R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening chapter is brilliant. A soft, middle aged corporate lawyer, used to boardrooms and chasing secretaries, has a gun pulled on him and slowly his brain processes the situation he’s in. ‘That can’t be a gun’ he tells himself, ‘My life does not involve such things as guns and being shot’. His realisation that he is indeed about to die and his desperate attempts to try and save himself from a situation he in no way understands is frighteningly well done.

Unfortunately nothing else in this novel really matches. It’s not that it’s dull as such, more that it never reaches the necessary levels of excitement. Towards the end the adrenalin does pump a little more in the book’s bloodstream, but by that point other flaws have arisen – notably some dubious character motivation (a woman falling suddenly and inexplicably in love with the hero, in a way that only happens in books and films). And once a head of steam has been got up, the conclusion itself is rather rushed and anticlimactic.

Still it’s interesting to read an earlier take on the dodgy dealings of banks. It being 1999 the dealings are properly murky and criminal, and not just treating the world financial system like a drunk and depressed tourist would treat a Vegas roulette wheel . But when the study is written of how the literature of the 21st century reflected the current events, this book will be a footnote to show that even – at the start of the bubble – esteemed writers were tackling the subject of dodgy banks. Unfortunately, despite the brilliant opening, this novel is likely to be a footnote in John Le Carre’s career as well.

[Littlebrit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le Carré is at the top of his form with Single and Single. First published in 1999, this riveting tale is frighteningly attuned to the events of 2018. Not a spy novel but just as full of mind-blowing plot twists and searing emotional build-ups and cliffhangers as any of his "Smiley" novels. His characters, even the minor ones, are skillfully conjured so that the reader really gets involved. I found myself saying "Don't do that" and "Be careful" out loud at several points in this riveting and highly disturbing tale. I'm not giving anything away by saying that after reading this story, you'll never feel the same way about money laundering.

[David]

In many ways, a slightly downsized version of A Perfect Spy. The father-son dynamic drives the narrative, and untrustworthy Russians (Georgians to be precise) together with equally untrustworthy Englishmen populate the plot. As ever, there are smart women without whom the ego-inflated men would be dead for long ago. Aggie is especially strong. I can't help feeling that, in a very real way, the resolution is a little too forgiving; maybe 'undeserved' is a better word.

[John Gribbin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Le Carre on autopilot. Some nice descriptive stuff, but very weak plotting and unconvincing characterisation. Went on far too long, then ended in a rush as if he had decided he had had enough and it was time to go on holiday and spend the advance. The hero's relationship with women is like early James Bond, and not in a good way. And his ability to talk himself out of trouble is literally unbelievable.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A curious tale, but not any less complex than most of the author's spy work. There are moments, even in his darker stories, when the reader erupts into a grin or laughs. Cunning is not always clever, which helps keep it from being exposed.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best, but a good story all the same.

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

'...what the hell happened next?’ He was so warm! He could feel it! It was here in the room. It was across the packing case from him. It was inside Massingham’s skull and begging to come out – till at the very last second it turned and scurried back to safety. [p. 282]

Single and Single opens with the execution of a London banker, employed by Single and Single, on a windswept Turkish hillside. He has no idea why he's being killed: some idea why the killing is being filmed.

Back in the UK, a children's entertainer named Oliver Hawthorne is summoned to his own bank because over five million pounds has been deposited in his young daughter's trust fund. Can he explain this? No. But he knows a man who can help: a Customs and Excise officer named Brock, who has been after the charismatic Tiger Single (head of Single and Single) on charges of fraud and money-laundering.

Back in the golden days of the early 1990s, Oliver worked for Single and Single: he became aware of the firm's valuable Russian clients, and -- after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the attempted coup -- the slow restructuring of their import/export business as a crime syndicate. Oliver's left all that behind: he betrayed the firm, and his father, and went into hiding. But now the tables are turned and the Russians have a blood debt to repay.

Lovely writing, stereotyped secondary characters (a housekeeper weeps and wrings hands; a gay man says 'darling' a lot). Oliver tends to feel that women need protection, even when they are evidently at least as capable and competent as he is. The last few chapters felt very rushed, but then Oliver was rushing too ... I didn't enjoy this as much as other novels by Le Carré, but it's interestingly structured, well-written and full of fascinating psychology and spycraft.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

John le Carre established his well-deserved fame in the early 1960s on the basis of the espionage fiction that reflected his career in Britain’s Security Service (MI5) and Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Over the five decades since then, he has returned again and again to the world of spies. But to stay relevant in the years since the end of the Cold War, he has also ventured into other areas such as corporate crime, terrorism, and high-stakes finance. Single & Single, published in 1999, explores the dark recesses of international money-laundering.

Enter the “Russian mob”

In the 1990s, once the Berlin Wall was torn down and the Soviet Union fell apart, Russia entered into a period with the trappings of democracy. The change did not run deep, however. Effective control of Russian society shifted from a Communist hierarchy to criminal gangs widely known as “mafias.” There was no “Russian mob” as such. (However, that term may apply to Coney Island — and it might even be an apt description of Vladimir Putin and his cronies.) With connections to Boris Yeltsin‘s government, the most entrepreneurial of the mafias made their fortunes by snapping up formerly state-owned companies at bargain-basement rates through privatization. Le Carre writes about one such well-connected gang in Single & Single.

The novel’s title is the name of a wealthy and powerful London-based financial services firm. As we learn early in the story, the Single fortune is built on money-laundering for Russian criminals. The firm’s founder, Tiger Single, is ruthless. But his son, Oliver, gradually develops a conscience after he joins the company. Oliver’s agreement to serve as an informant for Her Majesty’s Customs Service is the linchpin on which the novel hangs.

International criminals and corrupt financiers in a tale of betrayal

The story opens with the brutal execution of Tiger’s attorney on a field in Western Turkey. That murder reflects the Russian gang’s mistaken belief that Tiger has been stealing from them. Meanwhile, Oliver’s relationship has deepened with Brock, the veteran senior Customs agent who is handling him. To gather evidence against the Russians and his father, and to identify the corrupt British police officers who have sold out to Tiger, Oliver becomes deeply involved in dealings with the Russian gangsters and their families. The scene shifts from Turkey to England to Armenia, where the gangsters are based. The tale is fast-moving, suspenseful, and shocking. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that it’s dangerous to get involved with money-laundering for criminals. But some of us knew that already, right?

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Violent opening, violent conclusion, and quietly nuanced in between, with plenty of weird, memorable locations and situations. At times it felt a bit le-Carré-by-numbers (the absent parent, the broken marriage, the man good with kids and mysteriously attractive to women despite being a bit of a hopeless case), but the formula works, because I was absolutely involved with it all.

[Damian Moloney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good start and middle but silly finish.