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A review by skycrane
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
4.0
I'm not a huge fan of spy novels, but this book is excellent. I was first introduced to the story from the 2011 film. I've watched it 4 times, and on each viewing I noticed details I hadn't seen before. So, after my latest viewing, I decided I should jump into the series.
This is the second John le Carre book I've read. The first, Call for the Dead, was interesting but not great. Tinker Tailor is a massive improvement on every level. The characters are far more developed, we see much more of the world of spies, and the plot is vast and intricate. What I love about this book, what separates it from the vast majority of mystery or spy or political novels, is how grounded it is. George Smiley is not a globe-trotting super spy and the Circus isn't some high-tech secret lair. It turns out that intelligence is mainly a very dull affair. Information might come from a secret rendezvous between a deep penetration agent and a code-named handler, but at the end of the day, that's really just a conversation between two people. And collecting information is just the most basic element of intelligence. The real difficulty, the reason hundreds or thousands of people toil away in decrepit office buildings at all hours, is in collating the information. Separating the signal from the noise, sifting fact out of rumor, and cross-referencing various different sources is the real work. So even though most of the characters are former field agents who spent years in various countries running networks of spies, their day-to-day lives aren't much different from those of accountants or regular bureaucrats. Smiley spends the entire book reading old documents or going around asking people questions.
The excitement in this book comes from the gradual unveiling of a complex web of deceit. Everyone lies. Smiley lies to his friends, his friends lie to him. The documents he reviews are full of evasions and half-truths. Over the course of the book, he puts together a puzzle where half the pieces are missing and most of the rest are hidden, with corners torn off and the surface painted black. The climax of the book occurs not when he finally confronts the mole and captures him at gunpoint; the real climax is when he sits down across from one of the conspirators and lays out the theory he's painstakingly assembled. That's where Smiley reveals the fruits of his labors. The rest is just cleanup.
I have to admit, there were a lot of things in this book I didn't understand. However, the intelligence jargon is for the most part pretty easy to get. Even if you don't know what a "scalp-hunter" is, you quickly get the picture from the way the characters treat Rikki Tarr. Likewise with most of the rest of the terminology. No, what confused me was basic elements of the setting. This book was written by a British author in 1973. When characters use cricket metaphors or British slang, or when relationships are complicated by the byzantine labyrinth of social standing, it often goes over my head. Still, for the most part I was able to follow the path Smiley took in uncovering the mole. Each step he took made sense based on the information he'd already acquired. Le Carre doesn't try to trick the reader. If Smiley realizes someone is lying to him, then the narration will explain why that is. When Smiley puts together something he'd seen once, clues from a document, and testimony from an interrogation, it's explained clearly. The difficulty in understanding this book is not because the clues are obscured from the reader, but rather because the path from Rikki Tarr's story at the beginning to the final piece in the puzzle is just so long and complicated. It's hard to keep every part of it in memory.
Tinker Tailor mainly follows Smiley's investigation, launched after an emergency meeting with a high-level bureaucrat who oversees the intelligence service. Smiley had been forced to retire a year before, so he's mostly on his own, relying on his personal connections. I found myself wanting more information about the regular operations of the intelligence bureaucracy. Fortunately, the next book delivers. The Honourable Schoolboy still focuses largely on a single character's quest for information, but there's a lot more detail about the intelligence service, and the characters are actually active agents rather than loners working from the outside.
This is the second John le Carre book I've read. The first, Call for the Dead, was interesting but not great. Tinker Tailor is a massive improvement on every level. The characters are far more developed, we see much more of the world of spies, and the plot is vast and intricate. What I love about this book, what separates it from the vast majority of mystery or spy or political novels, is how grounded it is. George Smiley is not a globe-trotting super spy and the Circus isn't some high-tech secret lair. It turns out that intelligence is mainly a very dull affair. Information might come from a secret rendezvous between a deep penetration agent and a code-named handler, but at the end of the day, that's really just a conversation between two people. And collecting information is just the most basic element of intelligence. The real difficulty, the reason hundreds or thousands of people toil away in decrepit office buildings at all hours, is in collating the information. Separating the signal from the noise, sifting fact out of rumor, and cross-referencing various different sources is the real work. So even though most of the characters are former field agents who spent years in various countries running networks of spies, their day-to-day lives aren't much different from those of accountants or regular bureaucrats. Smiley spends the entire book reading old documents or going around asking people questions.
The excitement in this book comes from the gradual unveiling of a complex web of deceit. Everyone lies. Smiley lies to his friends, his friends lie to him. The documents he reviews are full of evasions and half-truths. Over the course of the book, he puts together a puzzle where half the pieces are missing and most of the rest are hidden, with corners torn off and the surface painted black. The climax of the book occurs not when he finally confronts the mole and captures him at gunpoint; the real climax is when he sits down across from one of the conspirators and lays out the theory he's painstakingly assembled. That's where Smiley reveals the fruits of his labors. The rest is just cleanup.
I have to admit, there were a lot of things in this book I didn't understand. However, the intelligence jargon is for the most part pretty easy to get. Even if you don't know what a "scalp-hunter" is, you quickly get the picture from the way the characters treat Rikki Tarr. Likewise with most of the rest of the terminology. No, what confused me was basic elements of the setting. This book was written by a British author in 1973. When characters use cricket metaphors or British slang, or when relationships are complicated by the byzantine labyrinth of social standing, it often goes over my head. Still, for the most part I was able to follow the path Smiley took in uncovering the mole. Each step he took made sense based on the information he'd already acquired. Le Carre doesn't try to trick the reader. If Smiley realizes someone is lying to him, then the narration will explain why that is. When Smiley puts together something he'd seen once, clues from a document, and testimony from an interrogation, it's explained clearly. The difficulty in understanding this book is not because the clues are obscured from the reader, but rather because the path from Rikki Tarr's story at the beginning to the final piece in the puzzle is just so long and complicated. It's hard to keep every part of it in memory.
Tinker Tailor mainly follows Smiley's investigation, launched after an emergency meeting with a high-level bureaucrat who oversees the intelligence service. Smiley had been forced to retire a year before, so he's mostly on his own, relying on his personal connections. I found myself wanting more information about the regular operations of the intelligence bureaucracy. Fortunately, the next book delivers. The Honourable Schoolboy still focuses largely on a single character's quest for information, but there's a lot more detail about the intelligence service, and the characters are actually active agents rather than loners working from the outside.