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A Most Wanted Man

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Years ago, I was awestruck by the power of Le Carre's books, from "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" to "The Little Drummer Gi rl." Later, I found myself caught up in the problems of "The Night Manager." I loved the moral complexities, the character depth, and the astute dialogue.

Since then, few of his novels have held me in quite the same way. They often seem vague, floundering, with no real direction. "A Most Wanted Man" has glimpses of that old Le Carre, though never as focused or riveting as in those earlier years. This time around, we are drawn into the mystery of a young man from Chechnya who's shown up in Germany. He bears marks of imprisonment and mental instability, and yet he seems to have valuable connections in the German banking industry. He receives pity and mercy from a banker and a female lawyer, while being hunted by shadowy figures from past and present. Along the way, Le Carre makes some biting commentary on the state of affairs in the modern Western world.

As expected, we are given in-depth looks at character and setting here, as well as the emotional and political structures that rise and fall around our desire for democracy. It's an interesting story, if not a bit windy in places. It was more cohesive than some of his recent efforts, but still lacked that beating heart that seemed to pulse in his earlier books--even faintly. I kept waiting for that resuscitation to happen here, but it never quite did so. After a few books of his that have showed this same lifelessness, I wondered why.

I went to Mr. Le Carre's website the other day and found this quote from him: "nothing that I write is authentic...Artists, in my experience, have very little centre. They fake. They are not the real thing." I strongly disagree with this statement. Most of my favorite authors connect with me through fiction because they ARE authentic. They find that center and get to the heart of the human condition, without flinching. I think Mr. Le Carre's cynicism has robbed him of his empathy and replaced it with justifiable anger and fear. Yes, his books contain those emotions, but they stopped having a beating heart last decade...and now at last I know why.

John le Carre bases A Most Wanted Man on a most unlikely premise. To depict the extent of Western xenophobia and scapegoating spawned by 9/11, he chooses to set this spy novel not in the country that was struck by the terrorists, or in the nations targeted by the ensuing War on Terror, but in the country that served as a way station for several key 9/11 terrorists.

Hamburg, Germany, a city known for its openness to foreigners, is infiltrated by a fractured young man from Chechnya who may (or may not) pose the next grave threat to Western civilization. Young Issa's improbable entry into Germany, tenuous connection to Islamic radicals, and inherited right to a large secret bank account held by British-owned Brue Freres, place him in the crosshairs of German, British and United States intelligence agencies, each with its own mysterious agenda. When young civil rights attorney Annabel petitions bank owner Tommy Brue to release the secret funds and help protect Issa from deportation, Annabel and Tommy find themselves caught up in a multi-layered plot that tests their willingness to sacrifice their reputations and livelihoods for the benefit of this enigmatic young man.

A Most Wanted Man succeeds not only as a sophisticated spy thriller, but also as a nuanced character study, provocative political commentary, and thoughtful examination of what it really means to be a moral human being. The writing is fluid throughout, and the well-constructed plot builds suspense even in the absence of violent action. The ending, though, left me with the impression that le Carre wound this tale so tightly that it jammed up at the climax and could not release properly. When this gets made into a movie, as seems to be the case with most of le Carre's books, the screen writer's challenge will be to devise a more fitting resolution to this fantastic build-up.

George Orwell.

With the possible exception of one young German lawyer there are no revolutionary acts in John Le Carre's "A Most Wanted Man". Rather, we have high-level functionaries from German, British, and US intelligence agencies for whom deceit is the norm and truth plays, at best, a secondary role in acting in what is or may be in each country's national interest. In tone and substance this is not much different from Le Carre's Cold War fiction. The trick is to see whether the same cynical realism plays as well in today's `war on terror'. Le Carre's transition from the Cold War to the brave new world post-9/11 is excellent. The result is a book that is dark, cynical, and almost as rewarding as the best of Le Carre's earlier fiction.

The most wanted man in question is Issa. Issa is the product of the rape of a Chechnyan woman by a Red Army Colonel stationed in Chechnya. Raised by his father in Russia, Issa flees to the west after his father dies. Issa finds his way to Hamburg and despite his famished look it appears that Issa has connection to money and influence. He is also, apparently, a Muslim and because of his Chechnyan heritage he is identified by Russian intelligence agencies as a suspected terrorist. German, US, and British intelligence agencies based in Hamburg quickly identify him as a person of interest. The other main protagonists are Annabel Richter and Tommy Brue. Richter is a newly qualified attorney who has foregone work in private practice to work for a German civil rights organization created to assist immigrants and refugees in normalizing their status in Germany. Brue is a private banker whose bank is the depository of the significant funds Issa may lay claim to.

Le Carre does a wonderful job portraying Issa, Richter, and Brue. Issa is a total cipher. He has a naďve innocence about him (think of Chance from Jerzy Kosinki's Being There) that takes the reader in one direction in assessing his motives and the real reason for his presence in Germany. Yet there are enough anomalies and discrepancies in his story and in his remarks to Richter and Brue that make you go, "hold on a moment, there's more here than meets the eye." Richter is something of a naif, her idealism tends to obscure her ability to cast a truly critical eye over the gaps in Issa's story.

Tennyson once wrote:

"That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight."

Le Carre writes with exquisite precision and insight about a world in which truth is not a matter worth fighting for. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

John Le Carre has never disguised his dislike for much that is American, and that fact alone has never stopped me from buying and reading everything he has written to date. I consider the Karla trilogy the best writing ever done in the espionage genre. In fact, it transcends the genre, and "Tinker, Tailor" in particular can be ranked among the best novels of the 20th century, period.

That said, as a long-time, loyal Le Carre reader, I have been growing increasingly troubled over his last several novels that his growing disdain for the United States has clouded his ability to produce good fiction. "Absolute Friends" was a major disappointment precisely because Le Carre couldn't choose between writing a novel that worked or an anti-American screed; the book was somewhere in between, and it functioned effectively on neither level.

I thought he had worked through that issue when he released "Mission Song," which was a return to his usual, high standards.

He has regressed - and then some - in "A Most Wanted Man." If writing mistakes can be tragic, this episode in a great writer's career is a tragedy. The tragic element is that he was well on his way to an artistic success but chose to throw it away with a denouement that serves his politics poorly, his art not at all. Over the first fourteen chapters he creates some very clever, effective, interesting characters; his plotting is excellent; the sense of place and color as good as it gets in modern fiction; the dialog borders on brilliant. Then the resolution: unconvincing, contrived, two-dimensional, and dishonest. A reader has every right to feel cheated.

That Le Carre has strong political views we know, understand, and accept. His views aren't the issue. The issue is that his compulsion to serve his politics in his fiction cheats the fiction.

There are a number of highly regarded opinion journals that would love to publish a 500-word essay by Le Carre on all that he sees as wrong with American politics and policy. Five hundred words would cover about everything he has to say on that subject in novels like this and "Absolute Friends." Perhaps, were he to vent his politics through such essays, he would then be able to return with a clearer eye to the writing of fiction. Le Carre has a lot of admirers who would dearly love to see the fiction he is still capable of writing.

John Le Carre was the true master of the Cold War spy novel. Beginning with The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, and contining thorough the Smiley novels, Le Carre has been synonymous with the inner spy, the brooding, betrayed spook who is both entrepreneurial and bureaucratic as the dangerous game is played out.

For years I have wondered, who is the new Le Carre? Sadly, it is not Le Carre.It is not for want of talent or imagination, because this book displays his prodigious talent. It is just not very interesting. I do not think modern day terrorists and their chasers are within Le Carre's world. It is something editors and publishers want, and to some extent the author himself may want, but it does not work on the level we expect.

This is the first time I've written a book review where someone gave it to me on the condition I write about it. I'm a bit flattered, but can I be fair?

The good people of Amazon asked me if I wanted to be in this Vine program. I said sure. They asked me to choose a book, and I chose this one. Next thing I knew, there was a smiley Amazon package at my door with the book inside, a note from the author printed on the dust cover addressed "Dear Reader".

You can choose more exciting authors than John le Carre, but there's no one better today I know of at the craft of writing, his way with presenting the inner monologues of different characters as they try to sniff each other out, or the ability to describe commonplace sights with a keenness for depth and mood that is almost crushing.

"The building was not a sanctuary, it was not international," he writes of an Amnesty International-like establishment in Germany. "It was a guilty, down-at-heel accomplice of Nazi times, squeezed onto the corner of a traffic junction and walled in by garish cigarette hoardings. The graffiti on its weeping walls offered tropical sunsets and obscenities."

You never visit this building a second time, but in le Carre's hands you don't need to. He's squeezed all the juice he can from it here, and a piece of it will stay with you for the rest of the read.

That's the great thing about le Carre, but there's a concomitant problem: Narrative morbidity. He doesn't write spy stories with guns, that's understood. But there's a static quality to the long talking-heads passages that make up the bulk of the storyline.

The story presents us with the title character, Issa, a Chechen on the run from the law in Hamburg for reasons that aren't immediately clear. He enlists the help of a beautiful human-rights lawyer and an aging banker who sees in the lawyer a sexy chance to do the right thing. Who is Issa, and can he be saved from the dark forces that want to make him their latest pointless casualty in the War on Terror?

The philosophy, not the mystery, is what intrigues and drives le Carre's storytelling here. Most of the way through, he makes it very worthwhile, his seasoned powers showing no signs of flagging. Sure, "A Most Wanted Man" revisits the familar ground of spy-turning and agency turf wars seen in "A Russia House", and there's a whiff of "Simple & Simple" in the battered old bank that one of the main characters administers. But he finds new and better ways of teasing out ideas. His May-December romance here is just as predicable as it was in "Russia House", but better handled.

The main, crushing problem with the book is how much the philosophy takes over and strangles a gripping mystery. The mystery of Issa is never fully explained. Instead of a denouement worthy of all the ideas he juggles, we get a sudden, sharp ending that makes sure we all know where le Carre stands on the political question of the day. Frankly, I was less interested in that then I was in the story of Issa and the other characters, and I felt a bit cheated. Okay, Americans can be terrible people, but is that all he wanted to leave us with?

High expectations accompanied the publication of this book. This was my "first ever" read of a Le Carre novel. Frankly, it seemed to be a "long way to a little house." In a word, "A Most Wanted Man" lacks literary value. And, worse, it is only mildly entertaining. I vastly prefer Alan Furst's work, the very author that the NY Times asked to review this book. He praised it - sort of. I don't quite understand what's so hot about Le Carre. I've read a couple hundred espionage thrillers in my time, and this one ranks in the bottom half of the pile.

While the story line of "A Most Wanted Man" and most of the characters were all very contemporary in a setting (Hamburg, Germany) appropriate to modern day terrorist tensions, the story itself was simple, though obscure, equivocal, and ambiguous. The tale needed grand scale elaboration to fill the pages, which was provided. The "voice" of the book varies back and forth from forceful to pedantic, and ends without a clear single voice. The language varies from slangy ordinariness to the philosophical erudite. (Why give the German speakers a "print accent?") At times the "plot" is so obscure as to be unfathomable.

The German characters, to my mind, were ----- well, so "German," and by that I mean they all fit some ghastly stereotype already existing in the reader's head. For some reason I expected the primary characters to have much more depth and breadth and had hoped that this author would escape the standard, awful time-worn and discredited characterizations of Germans. From "masculine" women to stiff-backed, unemotional and scheming men (whose real selves showed up only in their silent thinking -- but not in their words or actions), we are deluged with these oh-too-German-Germans. I had to suspend belief of their shallowness in order to get even mildly wrapped up in their rather interesting antics. Le Carre seems really to have had a hard time escaping his apparent habits as a writer of "cold war" espionage and the too-easy-to-stereotype East Germans of the time. The Americans, at the end, were also "so American!" Ugh! And Issa, the main character? He was bizarre, a bit crazy, wholly unbelievable, and was a major disappointment. Annabel was psychologically tortured and lacked credibility, a woman who way too easily sold out her brittle beliefs and was never once true to herself, except at some fleeting incomprehensible moments. The British? The Muslims? The Russians? The Turks? Others? Can't we escape these awful stereotypes? All were disappointingly and decidedly cookie-cutter. I was simply unable to "like" any of them, especially the primary players. A couple of the minor players were appealing, however, especially the two Turks (the mother and her son) who sheltered Issa at the beginning. Brue's wife was also interesting. Funny how the cameo players turned out to be more interesting than those in the main cast!

The final 80+ pages actually moved along rapidly with rising tension and danger. That was good. For the first time in a long time, I did not read (half way through the book) the final 5 pages to see who was still alive and kicking at the end. Kudos to Le Carre for that! Nonetheless, all the players, the institutions and their interests were so confusing and blurry that I had trouble keeping track of who was who and what their actions meant. Why don't these espionage thriller authors do what any sane playwright does and provide a list of players and their roles at the beginning?

The plot is obscure to a fault. And it's all about money, from start to finish. The people are unnecessarily mysterious and enigmatic. The interplay among them and their various national, institutional, personal, religious or ethnic interests were confusing and convoluted. The reader is included in enlightening plot details only when Le Carre decided to let us in on what's going on. While extraordinarily different one from the other, in the final analysis all characters were selfish and ethno-centered to their own disastrous ends. The primary characters were ALL neurotic, despotic and at a fundamental level - in print - quite uninteresting. There were no memorable lines to underline and mull over, no moments of clarity of any philosophy, no insight into human values, and little promise in any of the endless philosophizing by several primary voices. What drove these people to their inhuman and often crazed ends completely escaped me. No action, no moral philosophy and no motivation in these totally despicable people redeems. They're all unsavory, dishonest and in the final analysis -- unnecessary.

The end was a total let-down, a huge disappointment, vague and unsatisfying

So why read it? The author is renowned. The book is very well written. It's a story that promised to provide fictional entertainment about espionage and terrorism in this dangerous age of the early 2000's. Good enough reasons? Maybe. Maybe not.

I can't begin this review without saying that I have long considered John Le Carre my favorite write. I've read all his books - most of them several time - and have felt proud to proclaim myself his greatest fan. All of which makes writing my review for "A Most Wanted Man" both difficult and painful.

The book is a love letter to the Muslim community, sickeningly considerate of their views, while cursorily dismissive of "the West" (Britain, Germany, and the big bad wolf, America) and its legitimate security concerns. The writing is fantastic - when isn't it? the man is a literary genius!! - but at the same time, disgustingly contrived. Worst of all, he commits the cardinal sin: the story is a bore.


For a while now, Le Carre has moved away from a gimlet-eyed recounting of espionage's moral castaways and chosen to mount the soapbox of political indignation. If Jerry Westerby and Alec Leamas and Jonathan Pine were punished for their last minute conversions to decency, at least Le Carre offered an even handed view of the stakes involved and drew complex, engaging portrait of all combatants. I, for one, usually agreed with Smiley's plans - even if they went awry. Maybe I'm just a believer in old fashioned REAL POLITIK, but one man's life is often worth the achievement or advancement of a country's security objectives.

(Am I wrong or was it not worth Leamas' life to get the German double agent Mundt into Directorate of East German Intelligence? And by the way, Leamas killed himself by choosing to go back for the girl, as did Jerry Westerby by trying to save the villain Ko. So much for the past....onto A Most Wanted Man.)


First, there is the silly, shoestring of a story. A downcast Muslim immigrant steals into Hamburg hoping to secure money left for him in a private bank by his (villainous)father, a Russian colonel named Karpov. The money is to be used to fund his medical education. The Muslim's name is Issa - or "Jesus," - but he is the most unsympathetic, boorish savior that ever was. Issa attracts the attention of another cardboard character, the untiring do-gooder, Annabelle Richter. Just thinking of her heartfelt paeans to justice in this book makes me want to vomit. If there really are advocates like her in this world, I've never met one...and I pray I never do. Nothing matters to her but the poor wretches she has devoted her life to save. She only drinks water and dresses like a man. Cue: swelling violins. Cut to her flared nostrils as she fights the good fight.

Then there is Tommy Brue, a character Le Carre has written so many times he feels as shopworn as a Salvation Army overcoat. Brue is a fourth generation banker living on the vestiges of his family's succcess while lamenting the business practices which made all of them wealthy. He is another vile, phony creation. In Le Carre's world, the noble must be failures, drunks, tormented homosexuals,discarded sons, or all of the above. In "MWM," Brue is disgusted by his late father's coddling of certain Russian criminals - mostly former KGB types who made off with their country's patrimony in the murky final days of the Evil Empire - and is anxious to right his Daddy's wrongs. (Boy, it's tough to be sixty, handsome, healthy and wealthy. You've got to do something with your life!! Spare me!)

In walks Issa and his problems are solved. Here's MY problem: I didn't buy this for a second. In a tortuously long scene, Brue interrogates Issa and decides to come to his aid. Brue is literally overcome by the muslim community's nobility, their "grace under poverty." A more saintly bunch you've never seen. It is as if Le Carre has smoked some kind of "love opium" that makes him see every Muslim under the sun through rose colored glasses. Worse, Brue's motives seem as much to get into Annabelle Richter's pants as to help the poor Muslim. Make up your mind, Mr. Le Carre. Which is it? Sex or salvation?

Anyway, there is also German intelligence involved - they see Issa as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Time to put him on the unscheduled flight to the secret detention facilities in Romania...you get the drift.

Where will our moral crusaders end up? Take a guess. In Le Carre's world, the noble always fail and the greedy Western capitalists succeed. He has lost all nuance, all shading. It is one long, painful rant. Reading this book, I felt like I were at Marble Arch, listening to some loud mouthed, pretentious jerk lecture me for hours on end. ZZZZzzzzz!!!

John Le Carre has lost his touch. (Sorry, David!)

John Le Carre's A Most Wanted Man begins strong by introducing us to a multi-faceted and realistic description of Melik and his mother's life as Turkish immigrants in a post 9/11 Europe. And complicating this precarious situation is Issa, a Chechen stowaway who forces himself into their lives, leading to unwanted complications. The novel then introduces us to the other main protagonists, Annabel Richter, a human rights lawyer for a non-governmental organization and Tommy Brue, an English private banker. They get involved with Issa, and eventually the heads of British, German and American intelligence services since their mutual client (Issa) is a suspected terrorist.

Essentially, the novel depicts the machinations of the different intelligence services in the war against terror and the mostly undesirable repercussions of their policies among bystanders and innocents. It is an interesting read by itself, given the depth and insightful descriptions of Brue's and Richter's motivations and doubts, but since it comes with the marque of John Le Carre, the reader is expecting more. What we get is a fairly humdrum, ordinary snapshot of what happens to ants when elephants dance, with a lot of repetitive descriptions of the characters inner musings and flaws.

A Most Wanted Man is a novel of contradictions. It's a profound character study but the plot is quite shallow. It's short but it tends to be drawn out. It begins strong and ends weakly. It is a novel by a master but comes off like a novice.

As a long time admirer of David Cornwell's writing it is discouraging to have to say that this is a dull book. The characters are drawn with chalk. There is little nuance, and the emotions are stated, not shown. What is bad and what is good is not described, it is stated as it would be in an annual report. The unrequited and tired love of the participants reads like it would in a chemistry text. Finally, the complexity of the conflicts between east and west is ignored in favor of simple US bashing. In this novel our intelligence agencies are overwhelmingly heavy handed and the people working for them are crude, unsophisticated bullies. This would be understandable and expected from someone from the far left who opposed combating terror regardless of the consequences. But this is a rant from a novelist who has written well of conflict in the past. It is sad to see a book like this where the tension evaporates half way through. The outcome is obvious.

There are both real and imaginary problems that western governments have to deal with every day. And there may be a Robin Hood or two who, in addition to those in the Army who are charged with compensating for errors, are helping those who have been unjustly harmed by their actions. Unfortunately, however, the real challenges far outnumber the imaginary and ignoring them may have much more devastating consequences. This is a replay of Absolute Friends without a hail of bullets at the end.