Since writing the ultimate modern espionage fiction—The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor. Soldier, Spy—rigorous Mr. le Carre has understandably been setting himself new challenges; and sometimes he almost seems to be daring his audience to enjoy him. But storytelling genius isn't something you can hide, and readers thrived on The Honourable Schoolboy despite its wide, densely Dickensian fabric—just as they will be mesmerized by this superb new book despite its purposefully quiet, slow, downright claustrophobic austerity. Of course, part of the magic for le Carre veterans will be their devotion to British Intelligence buddha George Smiley, who's now in "dubious retirement," a retirement ended when one of Smiley's "people"—a fierce old Russian-emigre agent put out to pasture by the new, detente-minded Intelligence chiefs—is shot on Hampstead Heath after trying to reach Smiley with crucial evidence of. . . something. Smiley, dispatched by the Circus bosses to cover it all up, naturally does the opposite. He talks to the dead agent's pals, to his own old Circus colleagues like crusty, dying Connie (with the computer-memory) and that itchy old dandy Toby Esterhase. He goes to Hamburg and stumbles on a dead body. He gathers clues: letters to the dead agent from an old Russian woman in Paris who's been threatened into providing a cover identity for an unnamed Soviet female; blackmail photos of Soviet diplomats involved in something unauthorized by their government. And, when all the pieces and nuances are tested and fitted and held up to the light, they lead to. . . Karla, Smiley's nemesis, the Soviet spy-master responsible for all of Smiley's marital and professional grief in Tinker, Tailor. But what Karla is up to this time isn't tradecraft: it's personal, so personal that he has been breaking Soviet rules left and right—he's trying to get his schizophrenic daughter, now in a Swiss asylum, safely settled in the psychiatrically sophisticated West. Will Smiley take advantage of this disconcertingly human vulnerability in his arch-enemy? He must—and the last section of the book (after all that gentle coiling) is the inexorable, step-by-step Switzerland entrapment of Karla's confederates by Smiley's people, a project seen through to its glorious but joyless goal: the enforced defection of Russia's top spy. As always, the narrative is grand, the dialogue is even better,, and best of all is the warm, sadly ironic intelligence that colors even the tiniest of encounters. But one warning: the Smiley books really must be read in order, not just for the sake of their secrets, but in order to feel the full swing and pull of le Carre's triumph—perhaps the greatest variety, texture, and integrity ever bestowed upon a series character.
Pub Date: Jan. 2, 1979
ISBN: 014311977X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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