With this, I have read all of Le Carré’s novels. I don’t know
if the 80+ year-old writer has any more novels planned, but if he does, I’ll probably
read them. That is not to say that I have loved all of Le Carré’s novels from
the last fifteen years or so. Certainly, his work was at its best during the
Cold War, while some of his post-9/11 novels have left me cold.
I found A Delicate Truth to be a bit of a return to
form, following the story of the veteran British civil intelligence officer
caught up in the machinations of the British police state in the era of the war
on terror. The man is involved in a botched kidnapping attempt in Gibraltar, an
event that remains buried for years. But a young intelligence officer’s investigation
into the affair turns the story into as much of a mystery tale as it is an
espionage tale. The young officer faces many personal and professional risks in
his attempts to bring the details of this episode to light. Many of his
colleagues and superiors would prefer the events to stay buried.
Le Carré experiments with shifting time lines in this novel,
and it took a while for me to realize this. Two main characters are in fact the
same person, at different stages of their careers in intelligence, operating
under different names. Once I “got” this, I appreciated this literary
technique.
This is certainly not Le Carré at his best, this book does
not crackle with the intensity of his Cold War novels in the 1970s and 1980s.
But it is one of his better post-Cold War novels, and I was satisfied with the
reading experience.
Source: public library
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