by John le Carré ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1986
The "perfect spy" in this bitter, stately le Carré novel—more character-study than thriller—is Magnus Pym, 50-ish, a senior spymaster for Britain, based in Vienna. . .but now, suddenly, disappeared, after returning to England for the funeral of his old father, Rick. Where has Pym gone? Is he a traitor on the run, a double-agent? Those are the questions that face Pym's aging mentor, Jack Brotherhood, and Pym's second wife, Mary (mother of their teen-aged son); they find themselves trying to defend Pyro to the powers, that-be, to their CIA allies—as evidence accumulates to suggest that smooth, charismatic Pyro, who masterminded a network of Czech informers, was indeed working for the Czechs all along. Meanwhile, however, the reader knows exactly where Pyro is: he is holed up in a south Devon coastal town, fussed over by a doting landlady in a Victorian boardinghouse, writing his elegant, ironic, spacious memoirs. And, in chapters that alternate with the Vienna-based sleuthing, Pyro-sliding with surprising ease between first-person and third-person narration—sets down "Word for word the truth. No evasions, no fictions, no devices. Just my overpromised self set free." He recalls above all father Rick, an irresistible, incorrigible con-man who used, betrayed, everyone who loved him—including wife Dorothy (who went mad), a lovely Jewish refugee named Lippsie (who committed suicide), and Pyro himself. Pyro remembers how, following Rick's example, he learned "to live on several planes at once," to cultivate surface charm; he sees himself as someone doomed to become a "divided city" from the start—doomed to forge new loyalties only to betray them, doomed always to serve two masters at once, "to pacify and reconcile." Indeed, Pyro recalls how he betrayed father Rick, how he betrayed the best friend of his youth, a Czech refugee named Axel. And, above all, Pyro recalls how, meeting Axel years later, when both of them had become spies (on opposite sides), it became impossible not to betray his country. . .rather than his friend. ("Does it amaze you that Pyro, by making bonds with the forbidden, should be once more escaping from what held him?") There's a modicum of tension here as the search for Pyro heats up: mentor Jack, after interviews with all of Pym's intimates, comes to believe that his protégé is indeed a traitor; wife Mary, after a chilling scene with Czech spymaster Axel (also in pursuit of Pyro), comes up with the clue that finally leads the British agents to Devon—for the grim, inevitable conclusion. And, in the first half, at least, there's a basic mystery to ponder: is or isn't Pym a traitor? But, to an even greater degree than in le Carré's previous spy novels, suspense takes second place here to psychological texture and morality-play dynamics. The result can be somewhat repetitious, not entirely convincing (Pym's self-psychoanalysis seems a bit simplistic), more than a little preachy. Still, if less masterly than either the Karla trilogy or The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, this is a much plainer, finer accomplishment than The Little Drummer Girl—while the long memoir sections allow le Carré to write his richest, most unabashedly Dickensian prose yet: occasionally self-conscious or precious, often stirring, magical, gravely joyous.
Pub Date: May 1, 1986
ISBN: 0143119761
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1986
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by John le Carré ; edited by Tim Cornwell ; illustrated by John le Carré
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by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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New York Times Bestseller
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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