A review by guypaul
The Looking Glass War by John le Carré

3.0

I enjoyed a couple of sections in this book tremendously, but the characters did not seem as defined as in other le Carre novels. There is a lot of technical jargon and descriptions of setting up radio equipment that may have been a metaphor for the hopelessly bumbling condition of military intelligence but it made for difficult reading. I wish the book had been longer with more detailed character development. Smiley is barely included in the story at all, only popping up a handful of times and (unless you have read other le Carre novels) without justification. If this had been the first book of le Carre's I had read, I would have been asking, "Who is that guy supposed to be? Where did he come from?"