What are your thoughts on John le Carré, cold war British spymaster?
>>24788127I read the first book and I have the second. It’s in my “to read” stack.I very much enjoyed the first book. Very contemplative with some tight plotting with a few moments of genuine terror. I especially liked the Scotland Yard guy Smiley befriends. I was told to skip to the third book “the spy who came in from the cold” but my sense of “completeness” wouldn’t allow it and I’m glad I didn’t.I wasn’t expecting the main character to be cucked or for him to run back to her the minute she writes him a letter, but I guess that’s part of his character: people take one look at him and write him off as a has been, pathetic cuck, and then underestimate a man who is actually very meticulous and good at his job.
>>24788145>I was told to skip to the third book “the spy who came in from the cold”A lot of people say this I've noticed, but the Smiley series does benefit from being read in order. You're going to love Cold though, it's fantastic Leamas is one of the more underrated characters of his. I'm currently reading A Delicate Truth, set in the Gordon Brown era, and it's great. Quite meandering but in a very characteristic English way.
>>24788145>>24788165a murder of quality isn't a bad book, i think people are just disappointed to find out it's a basic murder story and not a spy thriller like they expect from le carré. the looking glass war is a joyless slog and very much worth skipping though.
>>24788127I read “in from the cold” and didn’t love it but liked it. Tried tinker tailor soldier spy next and dropped it a few chapters in.
>>24788127He was a bad man for betraying his wife
as a swede I am numb to detective/spy/crime/thriller type stories. I have heard this name many times but not read anything by him. did he actually write literature or is it the airport pulp kind of stuff? not to be rude or snobby about it, I like cool and fun things too, certainly worse things than many of you consume, but I want no ambiguity in what I mean here
>>24788127I am quite fond of him. I've been going through his books in order, just finished The Honourable Schoolboy, and each one has been a banger. Even The Naive and Sentimental Lover, while not a spy book, was still thoroughly entertaining and humorous. Probably my least favorite so far was The Looking Glass War, the cynicism was laid on a bit thick there, but even so it was a highly entertaining shitshow.Sometimes it takes me a while to decipher the britishness, but I can't really fault him for that. It always clicks sooner or later.Top bloke. Look forward to reading more of him.
>>24788311Most consider him to be closer to literary than genre fiction, especially in his best work, yes.
>>24788356Alright, thanks. I'll grab something of his out of my parents' shelves when next I visit them, then. These threads seem to pop up almost bimonthly so I'll give my thoughts in a later one
>>24788311He's somewhere in the middle but a lot better than the Swedish crime thrillers you're probably used to. If you want to read something more literary about a spy check out The Untouchable by John Banville.
>>24788127I only read his Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.But, I just have ti accept that anyone who worked in these spy and intelligence agencies has had their writing talent so ruined by their rigid reporting writing style, they can’t write any good enjoyable to read books anymore.Genuinely awful when compared to writers with proper literary prose.The only good ex spy writers are those who write their works as informative memoirs where low literary merit comes second to being informative.
>buckbroken so bad by Brexit he has an identity crisis and moves to IrelandKek. Why are boomers like this?
>>24788544Watch the clip of the former MI6 head crying brexit made the UK irrelevant.Almost every john le carre book mentions the loss of the British empire as some motivating factor (usually in the negative).They are not coping well with their decline.https://x.com/BestForBritain/status/1845851984701640916/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1845851984701640916¤tTweetUser=BestForBritain
>>24788544All his later books have a couple pages of the protagonist seething about drumpf
>>24788544I think he made the villains in his last books literal Brexit voters out of spite.Carre's trajectory is an interesting window into just why Russia-hate is so embedded in our crusty old intelligence services.
>>24788573I mean, they had to live through the Soviet and global communism threat.They probably just instinctively want to make sure that dog is dead with no chance of threatening their existence again.
>>24788127>I wasn’t expecting the main character to be cuckedFirst time reading a bong author?
>>24788580The intelligence agencies *are* a global communist threat
>>24788127I don’t like his work, but I adore The Russia House and reread it every few years.
>>24788603Then theyre fighting global communist threat team B
>>24788561>real name Dave Cornwall>goes by John le CarréWho could have imagined he was a self-hating cuck, I believe he also said Salman Rushdie deserved his fatwa or something along those lines. People like him are the engineers of the decline.
>>24788749Once boomers die off the world will begin healing. I believe this with my whole heart.
