The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (The Spy) was a breakthrough novel for John le Carre, but also for the general spy fiction class, adding a level of clever craftsmanship, setting it above others when it was published in 1962, but it is still a good read today.
It is set in a time of international espionage on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Berlin seems grim, grey, and cold.
A complicated triple bluff is at the heart of the plot, but not all the lead characters know all of the parts. The author gradually unravels the subterfuge to the readers at the same time the characters face new risks.
“Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things”; he grinned like a schoolboy. “And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can’t compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?”
Leamas was lost. He’d heard the man talked a lot of drivel before getting the knife in, but he’d never heard anything like this before.
“I mean you’ve got to compare method with method, and ideal with ideal. I would say that since the war, our methods—ours and those of the opposition—have become much the same. I mean you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?”
The spy who came in from the cold is Alec Leamas who believes he is on a last mission to take out a rival in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The readers follow his apparent defection and it is not until the end of the novel that he, and we as readers find out the grand deception. At the very end of the book Leamas makes a choice based on empathy, a final act of personal redemption. It is a finale that is stunning in its irony and its brevity.
This is a chilling story told by a master storyteller. Recommended – 4.5 out of 5.0 stars
