The Honourable Schoolboy

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He has the passion and idealism which the bitter and deflated Leamas completely lacked; he is the ideal sort of 'reckless' figure to support a 'journey-narrative' (as LeCarre gives us here). He sets the tale in one of the most exotic environments possible (SE Asia) and at the same time, one of the most iconic environments as far as the end of the British Empire is concerned. It's a sustained exercise in pacing and suspense which exists nowhere else in the genre, handled as finely. The characters were all well-developed – some of them I loved, some of them disgusted me, some of them I felt deep empathy for, and there were some that I just didn’t know how I felt about them. as if a football coach in the middle of a losing streak had left the field to cry and read Rainer Maria Rilke.

This quote seems fairly elementary in substance, and I can’t help thinking how much this seems to reflect the basic expectation of the intelligence agents in this novel. Brother Luke, you have committed several acts of war today and one more will meet with our severe disfavour. These doubts then go on to motivate Westerby's actions and decisions in the last section of the novel. Tinker Tailor is a masterfully plotted work of overlapping timelines, and contains some of le Carré’s most brilliantly rendered character portraits, but if I’m being honest, the real reason I love it is that I’m a sucker for confidently and convincingly deployed spy jargon and narratives that teeter on the edge of incomprehensibility as they hurtle toward their conclusions. Inland, the Island whined and clanged and throbbed, and the huge slums twinkled like jewel boxes opened by the deceptive beauty of the night.Rare among thrillers, the Smiley books — there are nine of them, including A Legacy of Spies — score highly in both the qualities that people pretend to like in books (formal style, psychological portraiture, political intelligence, moral sensibility) and the qualities that people actually like in books (sex, violence, plot twists, convincing and frequently deployed spy jargon). Just to reflect and remember a little bit: LeCarre's previous book ('Tinker Tailor') immediately became --upon publishing--the definitive 'mole' story.

When Smiley, in his latest incarnation, suddenly turns out, at the opportune moment, to be an expert on Chinese naval engineering, his subordinates might be wide-eyed in worship, but the reader is unable to resist blowing a discreet raspberry. In the aftermath, it is revealed that the British government (Lacon, Collins and Saul Enderby) made a deal behind the scenes where the CIA will interrogate Nelson alone, freezing out Smiley and the Circus.He is overwhelmed by his desire for Lizzie and the notion that Nelson Ko, although an important intelligence asset for the Circus and the Cousins, deserves to be reunited with his brother.