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Osetljiva istina
Protivteroristička akcija pod šifrovanim nazivom Divljina sprovešće se u najdragocenijoj britanskoj koloniji, na Gibraltaru. Cilj akcije je hvatanje ozloglašenog džihadiste i trgovca oružjem. Alfa i omega plana su ambiciozni britanski ministar spoljnih poslova i njegov prijatelj, vlasnik kompanije za obezbeđivanje plaćenika. Kit Robn, iskusan diplomata i pouzdan čovek, biće ministrove „oči i uši na terenu”. Operacija je toliko osetljiva da čak ni ministrov lični sekretar Tobi Bel nije uključen u nju. Naslućujući pogubnu zaveru, Tobi pokušava da je spreči, no ubrzo ga udaljavaju iz Engleske, iz Evrope... on se upliće u krug insajdera upućenih u strogo čuvane državne tajne.
294 pages, Paperback
First published April 25, 2013
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About the author
John le Carré
378 books9,517 followersJohn 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,397 reviews
October 27, 2019
“Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, dear man. In an imperfect world, I fear it’s the best we can manage.”
― John le Carré Quoting François de La Rochefoucauld, A Delicate Truth
If for whatever reason, during the last twenty years, you've missed John le Carré's anger, and if his last 10 books were too subtle for you, and if you didn't catch le Carré's moral outrage in 'The Constant Gardner' and 'A Most Wanted Man', then you might need to skip 'A Delicate Truth'. In his newest novel, John le Carré tackles the amoral world of private contract espionage, rendition, and ineptness. Le Carré attacks Western ethics, Western hypocrisy, and the West's venal “war gone corporate.”
John le Carré's war is a battle of young idealism vs amoral and often incompetent mercenaries. It is a war of principled, but flawed individuals vs what Olen Steinhauer summarized as the "shortsightedness, hypocrisy, lies and unfettered greed that plagues the “post-imperial, post-cold-war world".
This isn't the most artful of le Carré's novels, but it is probably one of his sharpest. He dares the reader to follow him in his role as the latter-day Jeremiah of state craft. He condemns the hypocrisy and the false gods of the West in his aim to "root out, pull down, destroy and throw down" the inhuman idols of the West. His NeoCon critics might aim for le Carré's eyes, but they can't destroy his vision or unbind his prophetic balls.
― John le Carré Quoting François de La Rochefoucauld, A Delicate Truth
If for whatever reason, during the last twenty years, you've missed John le Carré's anger, and if his last 10 books were too subtle for you, and if you didn't catch le Carré's moral outrage in 'The Constant Gardner' and 'A Most Wanted Man', then you might need to skip 'A Delicate Truth'. In his newest novel, John le Carré tackles the amoral world of private contract espionage, rendition, and ineptness. Le Carré attacks Western ethics, Western hypocrisy, and the West's venal “war gone corporate.”
John le Carré's war is a battle of young idealism vs amoral and often incompetent mercenaries. It is a war of principled, but flawed individuals vs what Olen Steinhauer summarized as the "shortsightedness, hypocrisy, lies and unfettered greed that plagues the “post-imperial, post-cold-war world".
This isn't the most artful of le Carré's novels, but it is probably one of his sharpest. He dares the reader to follow him in his role as the latter-day Jeremiah of state craft. He condemns the hypocrisy and the false gods of the West in his aim to "root out, pull down, destroy and throw down" the inhuman idols of the West. His NeoCon critics might aim for le Carré's eyes, but they can't destroy his vision or unbind his prophetic balls.
July 5, 2013
I have not read much le Carre, having decided long ago that his dialogues and conversations were too subtle and nuanced for me. I repeatedly felt as though I was supposed to have "gotten" something that I had clearly missed. Either my reading has improved, or he has become a clearer writer. I was never at a loss in this one, and I could only be amazed at his skill in setting, characterization, and plotting. His anger at the amorality of modern governments is fierce, and his depiction of bureaucratic waffling, incompetence, and self-protection is completely convincing. There is quite a long section describing a "Fayre" in a small town in Cornwall that was so fresh, affectionate, and appealing that it reminded me of Priestley's "The Festival at Farbridge." It gave you a sense of what all the clandestine stuff is allegedly meant to protect, and it makes you even angrier at failures, betrayals, and coverups. The writing can be quite affecting. Describing a landscape in Wales: "Pillars of blue-black rain rose above the green hills." I would never have thought of expressing it like that. The last 75 pages are relentless, and to the last sentence I was not sure whether the good guys would win.
January 3, 2026
"You want the truth? You can´t handle the Truth!"
Not as action- or suspense packed as some of le Carré´s novels, but nevertheless …
You may wonder what goes on behind closed doors, how unholy alliances are forged/forced.
In this case a scandal should at all cost be avoided, and there is a more than ready "facility management unit" to do this.
As in many novels from le Carré ´s hand we are circling around secrets that are laid upon you, some you have figured out by yourself, some half disclosed to you.
A quote from The Russia House. "You have to think like a hero merely to behave like a decent human being … " pretty much sum up the plot - and our protagonist faces a battle of consciousness well knowing he may end up as collateral damage in a game with high political stakes.
What at the surface looks like a bit of fraudulent political behavior turns out to be much more sinister.
I deeply respect John le Carré for throughout his writing career having the guts to put a morale into suspence litterature - not pointing fingers but by his storyline displaying how we all do have a choice to do the right thing.
Not as action- or suspense packed as some of le Carré´s novels, but nevertheless …
You may wonder what goes on behind closed doors, how unholy alliances are forged/forced.
In this case a scandal should at all cost be avoided, and there is a more than ready "facility management unit" to do this.
As in many novels from le Carré ´s hand we are circling around secrets that are laid upon you, some you have figured out by yourself, some half disclosed to you.
A quote from The Russia House. "You have to think like a hero merely to behave like a decent human being … " pretty much sum up the plot - and our protagonist faces a battle of consciousness well knowing he may end up as collateral damage in a game with high political stakes.
What at the surface looks like a bit of fraudulent political behavior turns out to be much more sinister.
I deeply respect John le Carré for throughout his writing career having the guts to put a morale into suspence litterature - not pointing fingers but by his storyline displaying how we all do have a choice to do the right thing.
December 19, 2019
-Un le Carré menor.-
Género. Novela.
Lo que nos cuenta. En el libro Una verdad delicada (publicación original: A Delicate Truth, 2013) somos testigos de una operación de la inteligencia británica en Gibraltar contra la venta de armas a terroristas. La operación tiene el auspicio del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores británicos y, como testigo, está uno de sus miembros, uno que no solía participar en operaciones y que, además, lleva lejos de la primera línea de actuación mucho tiempo. En la operación también interviene una empresa privada de inteligencia y operaciones, al servicio de los británicos, y el desarrollo de la acción tiene un resultado discutible y, hasta cierto punto, indeterminado. Tiempo después, otro de los participantes en la operación tiene dudas sobre lo que sucedió en realidad y las implicaciones de la acción.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...
Género. Novela.
Lo que nos cuenta. En el libro Una verdad delicada (publicación original: A Delicate Truth, 2013) somos testigos de una operación de la inteligencia británica en Gibraltar contra la venta de armas a terroristas. La operación tiene el auspicio del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores británicos y, como testigo, está uno de sus miembros, uno que no solía participar en operaciones y que, además, lleva lejos de la primera línea de actuación mucho tiempo. En la operación también interviene una empresa privada de inteligencia y operaciones, al servicio de los británicos, y el desarrollo de la acción tiene un resultado discutible y, hasta cierto punto, indeterminado. Tiempo después, otro de los participantes en la operación tiene dudas sobre lo que sucedió en realidad y las implicaciones de la acción.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...
December 8, 2021
One of the weaker entries in Le Carre's impressive body of work -- which means it's still better than 90% of all 'genre' fiction out there, but from Le Carre you usually get something better.
Anatomy of a Le Carre novel: The center of his works generally consists of a morally clear protagonist whom you follow through a swamp of deceit and treachery, generally served up with large doses of politesse and impeccable manners. Swine do not always wallow in the mud. The sparring matches between Oxford-educated gentlemen over Calvados in which more is left unsaid than stated openly is what makes these books so enjoyable for the right type of reader. The reader sees the forces of greed and evil swirling around the hero more clearly than the hero him/herself, leading to tremendous tension (and reading enjoyment.)
The author tried something a bit different in this book, and IMO it didn't quite work. Instead of a central figure to follow, protagonist duties are split between at least two people, neither of whom is nearly as interesting as a typical Le Carre figure. Not only did I find the multiple-hero approach weak and dilutive, but instead of two evenly-matched people slugging it out, the odds are stacked so heavily against the good guys that much of the tension is slackened.
No worries, Mr. Le Carre, you will still be recognized as one of the greatest writers of the 21st century.
Anatomy of a Le Carre novel: The center of his works generally consists of a morally clear protagonist whom you follow through a swamp of deceit and treachery, generally served up with large doses of politesse and impeccable manners. Swine do not always wallow in the mud. The sparring matches between Oxford-educated gentlemen over Calvados in which more is left unsaid than stated openly is what makes these books so enjoyable for the right type of reader. The reader sees the forces of greed and evil swirling around the hero more clearly than the hero him/herself, leading to tremendous tension (and reading enjoyment.)
The author tried something a bit different in this book, and IMO it didn't quite work. Instead of a central figure to follow, protagonist duties are split between at least two people, neither of whom is nearly as interesting as a typical Le Carre figure. Not only did I find the multiple-hero approach weak and dilutive, but instead of two evenly-matched people slugging it out, the odds are stacked so heavily against the good guys that much of the tension is slackened.
No worries, Mr. Le Carre, you will still be recognized as one of the greatest writers of the 21st century.
September 9, 2013
What can I say about the Yoda of spy-masters I haven't already said? That five stars aren't nearly enough?
No spoilers here. This is the behind-the-scenes story of a small anti-terrorist black op that might or might not have happened. Problem is, its very existence - even as a plan - is so politically incorrect as to be a profound embarrassment if anyone involved decides to break silence and go public with the few facts they know. So the trendy topic of whistle-blowing is very much at issue.
I find two things remarkable about this narrative.
First, the dialogue is almost entirely and deliberately off-point - more than in any other Le Carre book I've read. The words are about everything but the topic at hand. Everyone speaks, not just in code, but in hints and innuendos and metaphors. It's annoying. And real. And perhaps an angry commentary on a societal lack of not only frankness and honesty but also an unwillingness to face any real facts at all.
Second, you won't have a clear idea of who the main character is until fairly far along. He will grow on you, as he will become bolder in his own estimation of himself. But he's a bureaucrat (as are most of the rest of them) and in many respects lackluster. Totally absent are the mythic proportions of James Bond. And he has nothing like the cunning wit or the cleverness of George Smiley.
He does, however, eventually realize he has a conscience and a loyalty to ideals that are both naive and reckless.
Very much about today, and much to learn, if in those cryptic conversations you learn to listen between the lines.
No spoilers here. This is the behind-the-scenes story of a small anti-terrorist black op that might or might not have happened. Problem is, its very existence - even as a plan - is so politically incorrect as to be a profound embarrassment if anyone involved decides to break silence and go public with the few facts they know. So the trendy topic of whistle-blowing is very much at issue.
I find two things remarkable about this narrative.
First, the dialogue is almost entirely and deliberately off-point - more than in any other Le Carre book I've read. The words are about everything but the topic at hand. Everyone speaks, not just in code, but in hints and innuendos and metaphors. It's annoying. And real. And perhaps an angry commentary on a societal lack of not only frankness and honesty but also an unwillingness to face any real facts at all.
Second, you won't have a clear idea of who the main character is until fairly far along. He will grow on you, as he will become bolder in his own estimation of himself. But he's a bureaucrat (as are most of the rest of them) and in many respects lackluster. Totally absent are the mythic proportions of James Bond. And he has nothing like the cunning wit or the cleverness of George Smiley.
He does, however, eventually realize he has a conscience and a loyalty to ideals that are both naive and reckless.
Very much about today, and much to learn, if in those cryptic conversations you learn to listen between the lines.
July 18, 2018
John le Carre is probably the most literary of the great genre writers of our time. In most of his novels there usually comes a point (sometimes several times), where the elevated language, le Carre's sense of the story's moment, the ideas in play, all converge in a WOW moment of insight, wisdom conveyed, prophecy even. In le Carre's 2013 novel (the author is an amazingly prolific 82), those moments of literary high seemed to me to be missing. And yet, the author is still playing for the highest stakes. Oh, the story starts with a tremendous 50 page hook: A joint corporate (American) - British military ultra secret exercise against a feared terrorist. Engineered to occur, of all places, on the British colony of Gibraltar (that alone should have sent alarm bells ringing). Things go south in a bad way.
After that cracker jack start, things settle down into a more familiar le Carre zone. An idealistic private secretary, Toby Bell, to a hawkish British minister, senses something isn't right behind the minister's always locked door, the rerouted phone calls, the secret meetings, the altered protocols. Sensing the Wrong, he commits the ultimate bureaucratic betrayal. But his heart, the reader knows, is in the right place.
Jump forward three years, to the Cornish countryside, and the reader is initially bewildered at the cozy retirement life of a British foreign officer and his sickly wife. Spy things soon reassert themselves in the ominous arrival of an ex-solder turned leathersmith ( strong echoes of le Carre's earlier Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy here). Turns out this soldier was part of the Gibraltar mission, and he was a story to tell. At this point le Carre starts pulling his various threads together, and overall this is expertly, if a bit predictably, performed. But what elevates this particular novel, especially with it's super dark ending (one of le Carre's darkest), is that it anticipates the whole Eric Snowden "whistle blowing" affair. Oh, it's a totally different fact situation, but where le Carre knocks it out the park is how he envisions (before Snowden!) the threat to all of us that this unending War on Terror now represents. Le Carre has always been a champion of the individual against the suffocating bureaucracy of the growing police state. Here, late in his career, le Carre sounds a warning. The shadows are enveloping us. Decency, goodness and courage are no longer enough.
After that cracker jack start, things settle down into a more familiar le Carre zone. An idealistic private secretary, Toby Bell, to a hawkish British minister, senses something isn't right behind the minister's always locked door, the rerouted phone calls, the secret meetings, the altered protocols. Sensing the Wrong, he commits the ultimate bureaucratic betrayal. But his heart, the reader knows, is in the right place.
Jump forward three years, to the Cornish countryside, and the reader is initially bewildered at the cozy retirement life of a British foreign officer and his sickly wife. Spy things soon reassert themselves in the ominous arrival of an ex-solder turned leathersmith ( strong echoes of le Carre's earlier Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy here). Turns out this soldier was part of the Gibraltar mission, and he was a story to tell. At this point le Carre starts pulling his various threads together, and overall this is expertly, if a bit predictably, performed. But what elevates this particular novel, especially with it's super dark ending (one of le Carre's darkest), is that it anticipates the whole Eric Snowden "whistle blowing" affair. Oh, it's a totally different fact situation, but where le Carre knocks it out the park is how he envisions (before Snowden!) the threat to all of us that this unending War on Terror now represents. Le Carre has always been a champion of the individual against the suffocating bureaucracy of the growing police state. Here, late in his career, le Carre sounds a warning. The shadows are enveloping us. Decency, goodness and courage are no longer enough.
April 6, 2017
John Le Carre's latest novel is brilliant.
On the cover of A Delicate Truth, Gibraltar looms like the vast bulk of reality weighing down on the idealism and sense of duty that preoccupy the novel’s protagonist, as they do in so many of the works of John Le Carre. Gibraltar itself does play a key role here as the site of an incident that brings together a motley cast of hapless souls: the upstanding senior officer and the bent but bumbling junior Minister he answers to; the Minister’s fast-track Private Secretary and his jaded mentor; the upper-crust opportunist, his right-wing American bedfellows, and the British Special Forces soldiers made pawns in their machinations. This unlikely assortment of 21st century humanity is thrown together in what can most fairly be described as one glorious clusterf***.
The incident in question is a joint UK-US anti-terrorism operation in Gibraltar engineered under the tightest secrecy by the Minister and his shady partner-in-crime, financed by Texas-based evangelical Christian activists, and executed under cover of darkness by a combined force of handpicked British Special Forces and mercenaries in the employ of a mysterious American defense contractor. Our hero, Toby Bell, Private Secretary to the Minister but kept in the dark by him, learns that the whole thing went south. As the story slowly emerges when Toby is compelled to follow the breadcrumbs to the truth, he is thrown together with the now-retired diplomat who was attached to the mission and the diplomat’s daughter, a comely physician ministering to the poor in London’s East End. Toby’s rush to the truth through the minefields of institutionalized compromise is fraught with mystery, terror, pain, suspense, and the inklings of romance. Yes, A Delicate Truth is, in fact, one glorious tale, proof that John Le Carre at 81 still writes with the extraordinary skill he treated us to in the 1960s.
On the cover of A Delicate Truth, Gibraltar looms like the vast bulk of reality weighing down on the idealism and sense of duty that preoccupy the novel’s protagonist, as they do in so many of the works of John Le Carre. Gibraltar itself does play a key role here as the site of an incident that brings together a motley cast of hapless souls: the upstanding senior officer and the bent but bumbling junior Minister he answers to; the Minister’s fast-track Private Secretary and his jaded mentor; the upper-crust opportunist, his right-wing American bedfellows, and the British Special Forces soldiers made pawns in their machinations. This unlikely assortment of 21st century humanity is thrown together in what can most fairly be described as one glorious clusterf***.
The incident in question is a joint UK-US anti-terrorism operation in Gibraltar engineered under the tightest secrecy by the Minister and his shady partner-in-crime, financed by Texas-based evangelical Christian activists, and executed under cover of darkness by a combined force of handpicked British Special Forces and mercenaries in the employ of a mysterious American defense contractor. Our hero, Toby Bell, Private Secretary to the Minister but kept in the dark by him, learns that the whole thing went south. As the story slowly emerges when Toby is compelled to follow the breadcrumbs to the truth, he is thrown together with the now-retired diplomat who was attached to the mission and the diplomat’s daughter, a comely physician ministering to the poor in London’s East End. Toby’s rush to the truth through the minefields of institutionalized compromise is fraught with mystery, terror, pain, suspense, and the inklings of romance. Yes, A Delicate Truth is, in fact, one glorious tale, proof that John Le Carre at 81 still writes with the extraordinary skill he treated us to in the 1960s.
July 8, 2018
This is the modern version of Le Carre’s writing in classic form.
The spycraft that he writes about is both firmly rooted in the 21st and 20th Century.
Possible spoilers and a bit of a treat for 20th Century spy novel fans......
One of the main characters has to depend on an old reel to reel tape recorder to tape a clandestine meeting in his office. And then he uses modern technology to transfer the conversation to a memory stick. And when I read about the reel to reel, Smiley’s Circus popped into my head.
And the ending was open ended. So the reader can draw their own conclusion as to the final outcome.
What I enjoyed most was the opportunity to do this as an audio book. It made the story even more engaging.
The spycraft that he writes about is both firmly rooted in the 21st and 20th Century.
Possible spoilers and a bit of a treat for 20th Century spy novel fans......
One of the main characters has to depend on an old reel to reel tape recorder to tape a clandestine meeting in his office. And then he uses modern technology to transfer the conversation to a memory stick. And when I read about the reel to reel, Smiley’s Circus popped into my head.
And the ending was open ended. So the reader can draw their own conclusion as to the final outcome.
What I enjoyed most was the opportunity to do this as an audio book. It made the story even more engaging.
December 11, 2021
Brilliant! As we expect from le Carre, this is full of twists and turns but is unexpectedly very fast paced and a real thriller. Although there are the usual middle-aged, disillusioned characters, the lead is young and ambitious. The action jumps about in location and time, occasionally temporarily confusing me, but the tempo and the tension never cease. If you are a le Carre fan, this is a must. If you’re not, why aren’t you?!
February 4, 2018
Another blackly pessimistic parable by master storyteller Le Carré. The reader is let into the hidden corridors of Westminster, where parvenu politicians pursue and promote fantastic fantasies in order to advance their careers, encouraged and led up the garden path by private corporations eager to scoop up a handful of crumbs from the high table, a game in which ordinary mortals are mere disposable commodities. In one of his recurrent themes, a small group of elite soldiers on the one hand, and a refugee and her baby on the other, are drawn unwittingly into a wild goose chase orchestrated by new labour, and become its only real-world casualties. Everyone else manages to walk away unscathed, and because of their membership of the exclusive club that runs this country, keep their assets and comfortable positions, protected by the machinery of state that exists primarily to protect privilege and conceal embarrassing failures. The only ray of light is a handful of brave individuals who, outraged at what has happened, are prompted to take steps to put things right - but as they are only small cogs themselves, they cannot challenge the establishment machine.
October 9, 2022
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Review of the Penguin Canada paperback edition (April 2014) of the original Viking hardcover (April 2013
A Delicate Truth (2013) was again a strong novel by John le Carré and I enjoyed it as much as Agent Running in the Field (2019). So the contradictions and seeming errors contained in A Legacy of Spies (2017) are perhaps due to some sort of a revisionist examination of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963) and not the failings of a careless writer and an inefficient editor. I've yet to come to terms with A Legacy of Spies and have held off on writing a review except for the lede that captured my initial angry reaction.
Somewhat like Agent Running in the Field, A Delicate Truth centres on an older and a younger protagonist. Sir Christopher ("Kit") Probyn and Toby Bell are staff of the Foreign Office rather than the Secret Intelligence Services. Several years previously, Probyn had played an undercover role in a supposed terrorist extradition in Gibraltar (taking place in 2008). Bell was a secretary to the junior government minister who was involved. Both of them go on to further careers without fully understanding what had actually occurred. In Probyn's retirement, a chance meeting will cause the conspiracy to unravel.
Carré continued here with his late career bitterness with governments and corrupted spy agencies, be they privatized mercenaries or publicly funded institutions. The corruption of the then New Labour government in Britain by shadowy forces funded by the American neo-con forces is the key target.
I read A Delicate Truth due to the recent passing of novelist John le Carré (penname of David Cornwell) (October 19, 1931 – December 12, 2020). His death brought back memories of my first readings of his Cold War novels in the 1970s. Those were probably the first books of somewhat 'serious' writing that I had ever read, after developing an early love of reading with detective and science fiction novels in my teenage years. In addition to my re-reads of his early novels, I'm going to read several of his later works which I did not read at the time of release.
Review of the Penguin Canada paperback edition (April 2014) of the original Viking hardcover (April 2013
A Delicate Truth (2013) was again a strong novel by John le Carré and I enjoyed it as much as Agent Running in the Field (2019). So the contradictions and seeming errors contained in A Legacy of Spies (2017) are perhaps due to some sort of a revisionist examination of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963) and not the failings of a careless writer and an inefficient editor. I've yet to come to terms with A Legacy of Spies and have held off on writing a review except for the lede that captured my initial angry reaction.
Somewhat like Agent Running in the Field, A Delicate Truth centres on an older and a younger protagonist. Sir Christopher ("Kit") Probyn and Toby Bell are staff of the Foreign Office rather than the Secret Intelligence Services. Several years previously, Probyn had played an undercover role in a supposed terrorist extradition in Gibraltar (taking place in 2008). Bell was a secretary to the junior government minister who was involved. Both of them go on to further careers without fully understanding what had actually occurred. In Probyn's retirement, a chance meeting will cause the conspiracy to unravel.
Carré continued here with his late career bitterness with governments and corrupted spy agencies, be they privatized mercenaries or publicly funded institutions. The corruption of the then New Labour government in Britain by shadowy forces funded by the American neo-con forces is the key target.
I read A Delicate Truth due to the recent passing of novelist John le Carré (penname of David Cornwell) (October 19, 1931 – December 12, 2020). His death brought back memories of my first readings of his Cold War novels in the 1970s. Those were probably the first books of somewhat 'serious' writing that I had ever read, after developing an early love of reading with detective and science fiction novels in my teenage years. In addition to my re-reads of his early novels, I'm going to read several of his later works which I did not read at the time of release.
June 9, 2013
John Le Carre started out writing wonderful spy novels, and along the way became a wonderful writer who sometimes wrote about spies. When his territory of the cold war spy world came to a natural end he seemed freed to take on other moral aspects of the world, and to have become as he has aged, a waver of red flags, telling us that we our losing our power and our humanity. Notably, The Constant Gardener brought big pharma's dirty deeds into the light. And in every case he tells a gripping tale with skill and cunning. Never has radical political information been so entertaining. In "A Delicate Truth" he is back with the clandestine world, and in some ways this is not his most ambitious book. But this clandestine world is literally right out of yesterday's headlines (which happen to have been about the NSA's logging of absolutely everyone's phonecalls). With the war on terror increasingly privatized a shadowy outfit with links to British politicians the American Christian right, undertakes a bit of independent rendition (or illegal kidnapping of suspects), which goes badly wrong for the innocent bystanders. A decent young man in the Brit Foreign Office makes it his business. This does not devolve into Bourne style frenetic chase nonsense, but into a look inside what happens in decent people who are caught up in the ruthless actions of the powerful. It's a moral investigation that shows the high price to be paid for the ownership of a conscience into todays international dealings. Which is not to say that this nuance and complexity dilutes the tension. It doesn't. The structure is cunning and the dialogue brisk, a mature author unobtrusively in command of his skills. It does not have the scope of revelation of some of his recent work, but it never lets the reader down and it's a wonderful thing to find a writer of his success and seniority, still angry, and still putting the world to rights. Wish there were more like him.
May 16, 2013
This was my first le Carre novel and while it was entertaining maybe this wasn't the best of his to start off with. The writing is great and dialogue well-done. It is the premise that didn’t really do it for me. The operation which is the catalyst for the story just didn’t seem nefarious enough or perhaps it was just not fleshed out in enough detail. I just had a hard time believing the event was of sufficient magnitude and scandal to drive the actions of all the characters. Maybe I’m just jaded or expect more bang from a thriller. It is an awful event without question but seems like there are far worst atrocities happening every day in the world that make for a better story. Also, I had a hard time believing that one of Kit’s primary motivations was his wife’s despair over what was going on. Fitting for his character perhaps but just seemed a bit flimsy. The plot was a bit predictable. The bad guys a little neat and evil. The end was abrupt. Don’t regret reading it and will read another of his just not sure if this one was meaty enough to be a great spy thriller.
February 7, 2019
I enjoyed this book and rather forgot to make notes for my book club's discussion of it - I was too caught up in the complexities of the story.
It moves back and forth in time so that we are gradually given more information as we need it. Le Carré's anger is palpable, and the premise of his story is frighteningly believable. A supposed "rendition" of a terrorist gone wrong, and the ensuing cover-ups are bad enough. The really horrible thing, which we know to be true, is that there is no longer any moral high ground. The tactics of "our" side are just as questionable, if not downright evil, as those of the terrorists. Nobody wears a white hat anymore.
"What is the moral distinction, if any, between the man who applies the electrodes and the man who sits behind a desk and pretends he doesn't know it's happening, although he knows very well."
Exactly. Three and a half stars.
It moves back and forth in time so that we are gradually given more information as we need it. Le Carré's anger is palpable, and the premise of his story is frighteningly believable. A supposed "rendition" of a terrorist gone wrong, and the ensuing cover-ups are bad enough. The really horrible thing, which we know to be true, is that there is no longer any moral high ground. The tactics of "our" side are just as questionable, if not downright evil, as those of the terrorists. Nobody wears a white hat anymore.
"What is the moral distinction, if any, between the man who applies the electrodes and the man who sits behind a desk and pretends he doesn't know it's happening, although he knows very well."
Exactly. Three and a half stars.
January 18, 2025
Classic Le Carré Late-Career Fare served Brilliantly and Bitterly with Some Minor Reservations
John le Carré (real name: David John Moore Cornwell) wrote A Delicate Truth during his latter period. It was published in 2014, in the middle of the "War on Terror" and contains some of the bitterest Anti-American barbs of this latter "Angry Liberal Phase" of his life, a period in which some of his most pointed social commentary had a tendency to diminish his story telling with preachy dialogue and unconcealed contempt for the American Cousins to which the UK owed it's remnant status as a global power. During this phase, roughly from the end of the Cold War to just before his passing, he acted like a bitter, peevish, snobbishly envious, British Imperial old-school liberal who looked down on Americans as hopeless cowboys and "babes in the woods" of the Global Order. Which we may be. But he seemed remarkably non-self-aware of how this came across to some American ears in his otherwise fine novels.
Having prefaced my review with that, let me just say quickly that A Delicate Truth may be one of his best novels, despite its cynical portrayal of the Cousins.
This is the story of men of integrity running up against the hard, cold realities of Realpolitik and the brutal niceties of the Anglo-American New World Order Oligarchy.
Sir Christopher "Kit" Probyn is a "low flyer" ("under the radar" type), a competent foreign service official who served out his career honorably but with little to distinguish it until he is asked to serve as a representative of Her Majesty's Government for a covert counter-terrorism operation on overseas British soil. The mission appears to be a total screw-up but he is led to believe it was a success and resulted in his promotion to High Commissioner in the Caribbean, for which he is knighted. He eventually retires to Cornwall to care for his ailing wife and oversee the modest country manor she has inherited.
Toby Bell is an up-and-coming Foreign Office bureaucrat assigned as private secretary to another ambitious government climber, Fergus Quinn, MP, a New Labor radical who is the darling of the moment. Seems Minister Quinn has a shady reputation due to his financial dealings with a certain American PMC (Private Military Corporation) and a British Con-man, Jay Crispin, who represents the American PMC, Ethical Outcomes, to the various British ministries that might hire them. Tasked with keeping Quinn out of trouble, Bell is hampered by Quinn's non-transparency and refusal to be accountable to his own staff, disappearing and traveling on his own, and holding secret meetings with Crispin and various henchman of Ethical Outcomes. In his desperation to sort out his boss, Bell risks everything to record one of these meetings. Only to find out more than he bargained for.
This is a great conspiracy novel. And very well done.
As a former soldier, intelligence officer and, yes, PMC "Merc" with some service during the first six years of the GWOT, I recognize the ethical issues Le Carré is exposing here. It's fresh post-Cold War ground he is covering, meant to be eye-opening to the layman reader, but it's also classic Le Carré fare. All his novels are essentially based on the same premise: that the UK government's military-intelligence-industrial complex makes mince-meat out of well-intentioned, patriotic people who are just trying to do their duty. What is portrayed as morally black-and-white to taxpaying citizens is actually a grey fog of intrigue, moral ambiguity, and soul-killing duplicity.
Le Carré uses a lot of stereotypes in this novel to represent the boogeymen of the oligarchic system that rules over us... and the kinds of people Le Carré simply hates.
There is the brutal South African mercenary; the seductive American Texan Evangelical Republican Billionairess who controls Ethical Outcomes; the fat, double-dealing and highly religious American CIA officer (David Cornwell never could hide his contempt for George W. Bush, the US Republican Party, the CIA, and Evangelical Christians); the smooth British con-man (based partially on Cornwell's own father, the notorious British con-man, Ronnie Cornwell); and the ethically-challenged, closeted homosexual Senior British Foreign Service Officer who tries to take Bell under his wing and "save him" (a character based on two of the Cambridge Five traitors, Cornwell's peers in the intelligence community whose real-world betrayal of Cornwell ended his intelligence career and redirected him into fulltime work as a novelist with the pseudonym, John Le Carré).
These stereotypes would ruin the work of a lesser author, but Le Carré uses these tropes masterfully.
My biggest disappointment with the novel was in its central event--the controversial operational failure ("Operation Wildfire") and subsequent collateral damage--tragic as they are--which seem all out of proportion to the desperate attempts by the two protagonists to expose the truth and the need of the conspiracy group to take extreme measures to cover it up. Especially given all of the horrible REAL WORLD tragedies associated with the War on Terror. Way worse things happened during those two decades of the war. And there was plenty of blame to go around. But Le Carré/Cornwell can't help but make the American/Texan/Evangelical/Republican branch of Americanism the main culprit behind it all.
This weakness in the plot somewhat ruins the story for those of us who have worked in this area in real life, and those readers who are familiar with the work of American authors with their rather more elaborate conspiracies like Jack Carr or Ben Coes. But Le Carré is such a brilliant writer, so much in his own league, he could write about paint drying on a wall and I would read it.
Yet there is also surprising honesty here in one unexpected disclosure: Toby Bell uses the dreaded phrase, "The Deep State" to describe all of the forces he and Kit are up against. It's an astonishing innuendo (admission, really) by Le Carre/Cornwell that the British wing of the Oligarchic Elite--hiding behind imperial titles, protected by the State Secrets Act (British equivalent of the US Patriot Act), fenced off by the English class-system, and employing the veiled euphemistic language of the liberal academic class--is part-and-parcel of the same "Deep State" monster that American truth-tellers and conspiracists have been warning us about for over seventy years.
Despite the flaws, this is a great novel in so many ways. And Highly Recommended.
John le Carré (real name: David John Moore Cornwell) wrote A Delicate Truth during his latter period. It was published in 2014, in the middle of the "War on Terror" and contains some of the bitterest Anti-American barbs of this latter "Angry Liberal Phase" of his life, a period in which some of his most pointed social commentary had a tendency to diminish his story telling with preachy dialogue and unconcealed contempt for the American Cousins to which the UK owed it's remnant status as a global power. During this phase, roughly from the end of the Cold War to just before his passing, he acted like a bitter, peevish, snobbishly envious, British Imperial old-school liberal who looked down on Americans as hopeless cowboys and "babes in the woods" of the Global Order. Which we may be. But he seemed remarkably non-self-aware of how this came across to some American ears in his otherwise fine novels.
Having prefaced my review with that, let me just say quickly that A Delicate Truth may be one of his best novels, despite its cynical portrayal of the Cousins.
This is the story of men of integrity running up against the hard, cold realities of Realpolitik and the brutal niceties of the Anglo-American New World Order Oligarchy.
Sir Christopher "Kit" Probyn is a "low flyer" ("under the radar" type), a competent foreign service official who served out his career honorably but with little to distinguish it until he is asked to serve as a representative of Her Majesty's Government for a covert counter-terrorism operation on overseas British soil. The mission appears to be a total screw-up but he is led to believe it was a success and resulted in his promotion to High Commissioner in the Caribbean, for which he is knighted. He eventually retires to Cornwall to care for his ailing wife and oversee the modest country manor she has inherited.
Toby Bell is an up-and-coming Foreign Office bureaucrat assigned as private secretary to another ambitious government climber, Fergus Quinn, MP, a New Labor radical who is the darling of the moment. Seems Minister Quinn has a shady reputation due to his financial dealings with a certain American PMC (Private Military Corporation) and a British Con-man, Jay Crispin, who represents the American PMC, Ethical Outcomes, to the various British ministries that might hire them. Tasked with keeping Quinn out of trouble, Bell is hampered by Quinn's non-transparency and refusal to be accountable to his own staff, disappearing and traveling on his own, and holding secret meetings with Crispin and various henchman of Ethical Outcomes. In his desperation to sort out his boss, Bell risks everything to record one of these meetings. Only to find out more than he bargained for.
This is a great conspiracy novel. And very well done.
As a former soldier, intelligence officer and, yes, PMC "Merc" with some service during the first six years of the GWOT, I recognize the ethical issues Le Carré is exposing here. It's fresh post-Cold War ground he is covering, meant to be eye-opening to the layman reader, but it's also classic Le Carré fare. All his novels are essentially based on the same premise: that the UK government's military-intelligence-industrial complex makes mince-meat out of well-intentioned, patriotic people who are just trying to do their duty. What is portrayed as morally black-and-white to taxpaying citizens is actually a grey fog of intrigue, moral ambiguity, and soul-killing duplicity.
Le Carré uses a lot of stereotypes in this novel to represent the boogeymen of the oligarchic system that rules over us... and the kinds of people Le Carré simply hates.
There is the brutal South African mercenary; the seductive American Texan Evangelical Republican Billionairess who controls Ethical Outcomes; the fat, double-dealing and highly religious American CIA officer (David Cornwell never could hide his contempt for George W. Bush, the US Republican Party, the CIA, and Evangelical Christians); the smooth British con-man (based partially on Cornwell's own father, the notorious British con-man, Ronnie Cornwell); and the ethically-challenged, closeted homosexual Senior British Foreign Service Officer who tries to take Bell under his wing and "save him" (a character based on two of the Cambridge Five traitors, Cornwell's peers in the intelligence community whose real-world betrayal of Cornwell ended his intelligence career and redirected him into fulltime work as a novelist with the pseudonym, John Le Carré).
These stereotypes would ruin the work of a lesser author, but Le Carré uses these tropes masterfully.
My biggest disappointment with the novel was in its central event--the controversial operational failure ("Operation Wildfire") and subsequent collateral damage--tragic as they are--which seem all out of proportion to the desperate attempts by the two protagonists to expose the truth and the need of the conspiracy group to take extreme measures to cover it up. Especially given all of the horrible REAL WORLD tragedies associated with the War on Terror. Way worse things happened during those two decades of the war. And there was plenty of blame to go around. But Le Carré/Cornwell can't help but make the American/Texan/Evangelical/Republican branch of Americanism the main culprit behind it all.
This weakness in the plot somewhat ruins the story for those of us who have worked in this area in real life, and those readers who are familiar with the work of American authors with their rather more elaborate conspiracies like Jack Carr or Ben Coes. But Le Carré is such a brilliant writer, so much in his own league, he could write about paint drying on a wall and I would read it.
Yet there is also surprising honesty here in one unexpected disclosure: Toby Bell uses the dreaded phrase, "The Deep State" to describe all of the forces he and Kit are up against. It's an astonishing innuendo (admission, really) by Le Carre/Cornwell that the British wing of the Oligarchic Elite--hiding behind imperial titles, protected by the State Secrets Act (British equivalent of the US Patriot Act), fenced off by the English class-system, and employing the veiled euphemistic language of the liberal academic class--is part-and-parcel of the same "Deep State" monster that American truth-tellers and conspiracists have been warning us about for over seventy years.
Despite the flaws, this is a great novel in so many ways. And Highly Recommended.
March 19, 2013
It's a bit funny that a quote of Tim Rutten calling Le Carre "one of our great writers of moral ambiguity" is being used to promote this book. While that statement is certainly true of some of his Cold War-era novels, it doesn't really apply here - there is very little moral ambiguity in this book. The central characters have their struggles and doubts, but the plot very much revolves around their efforts to Do The Right Thing, and the bad guys are unambiguously bad. As with books like Absolute Friends and A Most Wanted Man, this is very much a political statement as much as a story, this time a condemnation of the increasing influence of private contractors in the contemporary infinite war zone of the Global War On Terrorism. While I do agree with his point it can be a bit too heavyhanded. However it's still a good read and Kit, Toby, Jeb and Emily are all very full and compelling characters.
June 5, 2013
A Delicate Truth was good to the very last drop. This one did not have quite as many layers as most of Le Carre's novels, but the intrigue was just as palpable. I remember the first time I tackled one of this author's books and it was almost a job of work. So many characters, so many chances to get lost. Worth it? Yes, indeed. This one is much easier to follow, but still demands the reader pay attention. You will want to do that anyway, reading his writing is a pleasure.
A tip of my old-school hat to the author for the passage that read ‘... the Personnel Department now grandly rechristened Human Resources for no reason known to man’. It had nothing to do with the story, but it tickled me.
This was a First-reads giveaway, thank you. It will go right up on the shelf with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and all the others. I liked Toby Bell and Kit Probyn, but oh, how I miss George Smiley!
A tip of my old-school hat to the author for the passage that read ‘... the Personnel Department now grandly rechristened Human Resources for no reason known to man’. It had nothing to do with the story, but it tickled me.
This was a First-reads giveaway, thank you. It will go right up on the shelf with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and all the others. I liked Toby Bell and Kit Probyn, but oh, how I miss George Smiley!
March 10, 2019
"Who needs the state when private enterprise will do the job for us?”
This is a rightfully angry book as le Carré traces the logical extremes of capitalism: outsourcing political intelligence and British military operations to private American contractors and mercenaries. For all of his authentic exposé, however, this remains a far less subtle story than his earlier Smiley and Karla books.
The murky moralities of his early works have gone, and been replaced by a strident indignation – the divisions between the villains and heroes are decidedly clear-cut with none of the grey areas that le Carré had so memorably made his trademark.
Much of the complications of this story come from the way it is told with a constant jumping backwards and forwards in the narration, and a circling around the heart of the matter. Told in a straightforward way, this would have been a fairly thin book to reflect the uncomplicated story at its centre.
That said, le Carré still has a social and political calibration that many lesser novelists lack – this isn’t vintage le Carré, and doesn’t have the emotional weight of The Constant Gardner, say, but it’s still a more authentic and sincere book than many political thrillers.
This is a rightfully angry book as le Carré traces the logical extremes of capitalism: outsourcing political intelligence and British military operations to private American contractors and mercenaries. For all of his authentic exposé, however, this remains a far less subtle story than his earlier Smiley and Karla books.
The murky moralities of his early works have gone, and been replaced by a strident indignation – the divisions between the villains and heroes are decidedly clear-cut with none of the grey areas that le Carré had so memorably made his trademark.
Much of the complications of this story come from the way it is told with a constant jumping backwards and forwards in the narration, and a circling around the heart of the matter. Told in a straightforward way, this would have been a fairly thin book to reflect the uncomplicated story at its centre.
That said, le Carré still has a social and political calibration that many lesser novelists lack – this isn’t vintage le Carré, and doesn’t have the emotional weight of The Constant Gardner, say, but it’s still a more authentic and sincere book than many political thrillers.
May 17, 2013
After completing the book, I read two reviews in the NYT. One by resident reviewer Michiko Kakutani, which was critical, and the other in the Sunday Book Review by fellow author Olen Steinhauer, which was much kinder. In a sense, I agreed with both. Le Carre, especially since the GWOT (Global War on Terror), has been almost obsessed with American heavy-handedness, blundering, and worse. As an American reader, I say to myself, “Really, we're not that dumb and brutish—are we?” Even recalling the worst of the Bush years—really? In short, Americans (acting under explicit or implicit government authority) are cast as bad guys. One must admire le Carre’s righteousness and his willingness to confront what he perceives to be the malign powers that should be wearing the white hats: the U.S. and U.K. Such plot attributes will keep Hollywood light years away from producing a film version. Ditto BBC? But there is also an artistic price: I agree with Kakutani that Le Carre creates too Manichean a world for him to reach the heights that he did in the Smiley books that arose out of the Cold War.
Also, as Kakutani remarked, this le Carre book, similar to some of his more recent efforts, takes an almost Hitchcock-like focus on rather ordinary folk pulled into waters far over their heads. Or, as Steinhauer describes it in his review, the focus has gone from spymasters to whistle-blowers. In this case, the protagonists are two U.K. Foreign Service officers, neither of especially high rank. They have been, they both learn, played and marginalized, and they seek to set things straight. In this way, le Carre pulls us into their stories, and here is where le Carre still shines: in setting, character, and dialogue The little things that can make his world of spies so much larger than that of others writing with in the genre occurs because it contains wives, daughters, lovers, mentors, Cornwall, London, among other things, all finely sketched. Of course, it also contains plenty of conversations that record the machinations of politicians and bureaucrats.
In the end, I must say that the Official Secrets Act and le Carre’s description of new star-chamber proceedings (which they hold the copyright to) doesn’t allow for any sense of British superiority over the gung-ho Americans. Steinhauer, by the way, appropriately defends le Carre against charges of anti-Americanism. It is the failure of American leaders to stand up for important values that he deplores, not the people as a whole. Many of us can say “Amen” to opposing many U.S. government actions in the last . . . . well, going back a long time.
In the end, as usual with le Carre, we aren’t awarded a happy ending, but we receive lots of ambiguity. How do these characters continue their lives? I wonder.
November 25, 2013
What makes corporates similar to cockroaches ? I think it's that slow entrance and the gradual overpowering of the original host environment. A sort of metamorphosis that leaves the host unrecognisable. They sniff out the profitable places of the world and slowly move in and before you know it they transform it. Look around you, what is surely the most profitable organisation you can think of ? The one thing that will never go out of popularity ? I'd say it is war. As long as we humans are alive on this planet, war will never go out of fashion. There are then the defence contractors, the presences in the corridors of power, the unholy alliances with the armed services and the political machinery and of the hundreds of millions of currency that flow like water between them. Le Carre with barely concealed angst explores one such alliance in this tale. A world where power and money grind human lives like ants under a boot.
This is the kind of plot that would have dilapidated into high octane chase, gunfights and other such cliches in the hands of another writer. Le Carre's characters try what they can to unspool a hideous conspiracy and what comes of it is what the crux of the tale is. The protagonists are regular people who battle it out against a seemingly omnipotent antagonist. A very similar thing occurred in The Constant Gardener and similar to it, Le Carre leaves the reader to figure out answers to a lot of questions in the end. There is a lot of venom spewed against the current state of affairs(read the time of Gordon Brown) and the US-UK tie up in the war against terror. While this populates the initial parts of the book, the last 50 or so pages move at a break neck speed and brings it all to an end.
A single man or a woman can wage a war against a system but the win might come at great personal cost. It is because of such human beings that the world still retains a semblance of sanity.
This is the kind of plot that would have dilapidated into high octane chase, gunfights and other such cliches in the hands of another writer. Le Carre's characters try what they can to unspool a hideous conspiracy and what comes of it is what the crux of the tale is. The protagonists are regular people who battle it out against a seemingly omnipotent antagonist. A very similar thing occurred in The Constant Gardener and similar to it, Le Carre leaves the reader to figure out answers to a lot of questions in the end. There is a lot of venom spewed against the current state of affairs(read the time of Gordon Brown) and the US-UK tie up in the war against terror. While this populates the initial parts of the book, the last 50 or so pages move at a break neck speed and brings it all to an end.
A single man or a woman can wage a war against a system but the win might come at great personal cost. It is because of such human beings that the world still retains a semblance of sanity.
June 16, 2013
I've been reading John Le Carre since I was in my twenties. A new book from him is like an old friend. As the concerns of espionage have changed over the years, Le Carre has kept pace. A Delicate Truth balances on themes of extraordinary rendition and the increasing privatization of international security: the legacies of groups such as the Iraq War's notorious Blackwater.
The book starts with a delicious sardonic tone that encourages you to savour the lovely sentence construction and often made me laugh with his observations of the hypocrisies of life in the public service. And as the book progressed, I was swept up into the story, rooting for the triumph of that delicate truth. As always, Le Carre gives us real characters struggling to keep some kind of moral compass amid a swirling gray mist of obfuscation and deceit; characters we can hold close; characters we would like think we would emulate under the circumstances. His characters don't always win. Those of us who read him regularly know that. It keeps us on edge.
The book starts with a delicious sardonic tone that encourages you to savour the lovely sentence construction and often made me laugh with his observations of the hypocrisies of life in the public service. And as the book progressed, I was swept up into the story, rooting for the triumph of that delicate truth. As always, Le Carre gives us real characters struggling to keep some kind of moral compass amid a swirling gray mist of obfuscation and deceit; characters we can hold close; characters we would like think we would emulate under the circumstances. His characters don't always win. Those of us who read him regularly know that. It keeps us on edge.
May 23, 2013
Although by comparrison the first part, chaper 1 especially, is slow and difficult to follow. This is deliberate and the events are left to be expanded upon throughout the rest of the book. Chapter 2 sets the book up nicely and from the third chapter you are hooked.
This was an interesting way to tell the story but for dramatic effect well worth it and the readers that read on are rewarded by vintage le Carre in a wonderful thriller and classic conspiracy story.
The writing is strong and clever as the truth seems always a page away and then uncertain as who can be trusted and its a truth no-one wants to see made public.
It tells of service and loyalty alongside deception and cover-up. As you are engrossed in this classic novel you long for that truth to be declared even when you feel spin will reassign it to a redacted history.
This was an interesting way to tell the story but for dramatic effect well worth it and the readers that read on are rewarded by vintage le Carre in a wonderful thriller and classic conspiracy story.
The writing is strong and clever as the truth seems always a page away and then uncertain as who can be trusted and its a truth no-one wants to see made public.
It tells of service and loyalty alongside deception and cover-up. As you are engrossed in this classic novel you long for that truth to be declared even when you feel spin will reassign it to a redacted history.
February 11, 2019
Outrage and intrigue and even more relevant now than when it came out six years ago. Unfortunately the outrage trumps the intrigue. Subtle this isn't; the two good guys have interesting foibles while the bad guys are all bad and the info dumps irritate. Page-turning action, very convincing interaction inside Whitehall, and it reads like truth, except that in our current jaded days I'm not sure the root cause would get much of a reaction even from the good guys.
October 9, 2022
A slow fuse build up to bang at the end. As the incident happens in Gibraltar I was reminded of the IRA/SAS incident there some years back.
For Toby Bell, the Ministers Private Secretary, this is about a choice between conscience and duty. Good use of flashbacks builds to the final denouement. It was a subtle novel indeed.
For Toby Bell, the Ministers Private Secretary, this is about a choice between conscience and duty. Good use of flashbacks builds to the final denouement. It was a subtle novel indeed.
July 23, 2017
Another solid effort by le Carre`. With the Cold War having ended he has had to shift his focus and at age 82 (when he wrote this) he has done a remarkable job in keeping up with the times, being current in his plots and delivering a scathing look at the new normal in counter-terrorism.
The book begins with a covert operation on the Rock of Gibraltar, a mission that was deemed a success despite some apparent issues prior to a raid on a jihadist. We are then seamlessly transported 3 years hence and from out of nowhere one of the participants in the operation appears and we find out that things were not quite what that appeared at the time of the action.
We come to realize that we now live in an age of mercenaries and independent contractors, people who owe their loyalty and allegiance not to a country or cause, but rather to their greed for cash and power. Le Carre` also shows us the fallacies of intelligence gathering and how bad intelligence can produce less than spectacular or noble results.
I am a fan of espionage novels and le Carre` is the worthy successor to the likes of John Buchan and Eric Ambler (two of the early masters of the genre). Reading le Carre` is an absorbing the thought provoking look at the world we live in, one that is filled with a host of characters and organizations that were not even thought of when he wrote his first book in 1962. And, happily there is another novel coming in September of 2017!
The ending of this book is cloudy and foggy, just like foreign affairs, and one can only hope that this new book will continue the story and characters he has introduced us to in "A Delicate Truth"
The book begins with a covert operation on the Rock of Gibraltar, a mission that was deemed a success despite some apparent issues prior to a raid on a jihadist. We are then seamlessly transported 3 years hence and from out of nowhere one of the participants in the operation appears and we find out that things were not quite what that appeared at the time of the action.
We come to realize that we now live in an age of mercenaries and independent contractors, people who owe their loyalty and allegiance not to a country or cause, but rather to their greed for cash and power. Le Carre` also shows us the fallacies of intelligence gathering and how bad intelligence can produce less than spectacular or noble results.
I am a fan of espionage novels and le Carre` is the worthy successor to the likes of John Buchan and Eric Ambler (two of the early masters of the genre). Reading le Carre` is an absorbing the thought provoking look at the world we live in, one that is filled with a host of characters and organizations that were not even thought of when he wrote his first book in 1962. And, happily there is another novel coming in September of 2017!
The ending of this book is cloudy and foggy, just like foreign affairs, and one can only hope that this new book will continue the story and characters he has introduced us to in "A Delicate Truth"
November 8, 2013
Now 82 years old, le Carre' continues to be relevant and excellent. Unlike many espionage writers, his stories are subtle and weave believability through the outstanding accounts of the every day work of spies, home office politics and today's trend to use third party contractors and mercenaries to do some of the dirty work. This story is an up-close and personal account of an older such member of the community with very little field agent experience and a younger up-and- coming agent who is struggling with some of the cover-up and political shenanigans of people right at the top of the agency. These two are thrown into a questionable secret mission and then struggle to do the right things, whether to disclose the activities that are being brushed under the table, mis-documented and forgotten about, or to swallow and keep it all secret, another unfortunate story with an accidental bad end.
Many TV programs such as 24, Homeland, Covert Affairs and others, cover this very same territory and all three parties, the Brits, the Americans, and the private contractors come out looking pretty stinky. And of course, many times, the third party contractors are right wing evangelicals who seem to be able to justify almost anything it takes to get the job done: A few innocent lives will be taken but that's just what happens. Don't talk about it, deny it, and go on to the next job.
I don't want my kids working for the CIA. Thanks for another great book, John.
Many TV programs such as 24, Homeland, Covert Affairs and others, cover this very same territory and all three parties, the Brits, the Americans, and the private contractors come out looking pretty stinky. And of course, many times, the third party contractors are right wing evangelicals who seem to be able to justify almost anything it takes to get the job done: A few innocent lives will be taken but that's just what happens. Don't talk about it, deny it, and go on to the next job.
I don't want my kids working for the CIA. Thanks for another great book, John.
March 6, 2014
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 18, 2020
John le Carre kelias į rašymą labai įdomus. Ilgus metus dirbęs žvalgybininku vėliau atrado savo meilę plunksnai, bet žvalgyboje įgytos žinios nenuėjo veltui - jis tapo šnipų romano klasiku.
Knyga “Nepatogi tiesa” - antiteroristinės operacijos užkulisiai. Slapta operacija vyksta Gibraltare ir, rodos, viską pavyksta įgyvendinti sėkmingai, bet po kurio laiko pradeda lįsti tam tikri dalykai, kurie signalizuoja ne tokia sklandžią operacijos baigtį. Su operacija susiję pareigūnai kelia klausimą - kas išties nutiko operacijos metu? Du tarnautojai, vienas buvęs kitas esamas, pradeda savo tyrimą.
Kūrinys unikalus. Tikrai nieko panašaus nėra tekę skaityti. Primena veiksmo filmą. Kalba ganėtinai sausa ir niekaip kitaip nesugalvoju kaip ją pavadinti kaip vyriška. Trumpi dialogai, šifruotės. Autorius puikiai kuria nuotaiką, bet tas lakoniškumas šiek tiek apsunkina skaitymą, nes prireikia laiko susiorientuoti kas vyksta. Tiesa, šiam žanrui ir kalba ir kūrinio pateikimas puikiai tinka. O ką jau kalbėti apie meistriškus nutylėjimus.
Knygoje autorius kritikuoja tiek santvarką, organizacijas, jų darbo etiką bei moralę. Nebijo atskleisti amoralų valdžios veidą kai vadovaujamasi toli gražu ne tomis vertybėmis, kurios deklaruojamos viešai.
Ši šnipų klasikos istorija suintrigavo mane, bet vis tik nėra tai mano skonio knyga. Parašyta gerai, bet kaip britai sako - not my cup of tea. Na, o tiems, kurie nori pamatyti valdžios žaidimo užkulisiai, kaip vykdomos slaptos operacijos ir kaip atrodo šnipų pasaulis iš arti tikrai rekomenduoju.
Video apžvalga: https://bit.ly/34APYMF
Knyga “Nepatogi tiesa” - antiteroristinės operacijos užkulisiai. Slapta operacija vyksta Gibraltare ir, rodos, viską pavyksta įgyvendinti sėkmingai, bet po kurio laiko pradeda lįsti tam tikri dalykai, kurie signalizuoja ne tokia sklandžią operacijos baigtį. Su operacija susiję pareigūnai kelia klausimą - kas išties nutiko operacijos metu? Du tarnautojai, vienas buvęs kitas esamas, pradeda savo tyrimą.
Kūrinys unikalus. Tikrai nieko panašaus nėra tekę skaityti. Primena veiksmo filmą. Kalba ganėtinai sausa ir niekaip kitaip nesugalvoju kaip ją pavadinti kaip vyriška. Trumpi dialogai, šifruotės. Autorius puikiai kuria nuotaiką, bet tas lakoniškumas šiek tiek apsunkina skaitymą, nes prireikia laiko susiorientuoti kas vyksta. Tiesa, šiam žanrui ir kalba ir kūrinio pateikimas puikiai tinka. O ką jau kalbėti apie meistriškus nutylėjimus.
Knygoje autorius kritikuoja tiek santvarką, organizacijas, jų darbo etiką bei moralę. Nebijo atskleisti amoralų valdžios veidą kai vadovaujamasi toli gražu ne tomis vertybėmis, kurios deklaruojamos viešai.
Ši šnipų klasikos istorija suintrigavo mane, bet vis tik nėra tai mano skonio knyga. Parašyta gerai, bet kaip britai sako - not my cup of tea. Na, o tiems, kurie nori pamatyti valdžios žaidimo užkulisiai, kaip vykdomos slaptos operacijos ir kaip atrodo šnipų pasaulis iš arti tikrai rekomenduoju.
Video apžvalga: https://bit.ly/34APYMF
October 5, 2019
It was my birthday on Thursday, and the thrill of the day (after buying myself a new pair of shoes & a purse that I desperately needed) was going to the library. (I did have other plans, but none of them seemed truly interesting when confronted with actually doing them.) So, I picked up the books I had on reserve, then walked over to the spy shelf -- my favorite guilty pleasure. I knew I had missed this book before, but I'd forgotten.
Long story short, beyond running out to eat some cake w/ friends and almost purposely causing a disagreement so we all could go home, I did nothing on my birthday after getting this book besides read it. It is compulsively readable, interesting and has ethical dilemmas galore. Also red herrings - something I'm not completely used to with Carré. (Or maybe I'm just really suspicious of good people...)
It's also nice to see Carré writing well outside of the scope of the Berlin wall, and he does write well here. It's as pessimistic as ever, but there is far less paperwork and more action. There are more characters from outside the secret services than within. It's different, and I like different. I don't know if it is a great novel, but I sure did enjoy it!
Long story short, beyond running out to eat some cake w/ friends and almost purposely causing a disagreement so we all could go home, I did nothing on my birthday after getting this book besides read it. It is compulsively readable, interesting and has ethical dilemmas galore. Also red herrings - something I'm not completely used to with Carré. (Or maybe I'm just really suspicious of good people...)
It's also nice to see Carré writing well outside of the scope of the Berlin wall, and he does write well here. It's as pessimistic as ever, but there is far less paperwork and more action. There are more characters from outside the secret services than within. It's different, and I like different. I don't know if it is a great novel, but I sure did enjoy it!
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