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56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Baby, it's cold outside, March 29, 2004
What is to be said about John Le Carré's THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD? It's shockingly entertaining, it's genuinely unpredictable, and it doesn't offer up a cheap get-out-of-jail-free ending. The characters are cursory without being shallow, the plot moves with amazing speed, and the action keeps bouncing along. In short, this is pretty much the perfect spy novel. As engrossing as it is realistic, and as absorbing as it is intriguing. SPY is a book based almost entirely around its plot, and while I usually give a storyline summary in my reviews, I don't think I'll be doing that this time. You see, the novel relies so much upon its double-crosses and back-stabbings that even the parts in the beginning (which are usually fair game for reviewers to spoil) can be puzzling and fun to follow. Every part of the story is interesting. Where other novels would still be setting up the premise, SPY has already started playing the game. Apart from the deviously clever plot, there is one additional thing I want to single out for praise -- the relationship that takes place between two of the main characters. On paper, it's a fairly standard idea: an older male spy paired with a younger, idealistic, innocent woman. But in execution it's a very nicely unstated bit of romance. It felt real, in part because Le Carré didn't beat us over the head with the details, merely sketched in the broader strokes and let the reader's imagination do the rest. SPY isn't a story where the characters trade artificially witty banter in between their death-defying action sequences. The protagonist spends most of the book tired, battered and confused. It can be a mystery at times guessing whether he really knows what's going on, whether he is the chess-player or the pawn. When one of the book's villains tries to engage him in a verbal battle over whose society and philosophy is the superior, he can only grumble and offer insults in reply. It's this sort of likable realism that makes the book the success that it is. At the time he wrote this, Le Carré had already joined and left Her Majesty's Secret Service, so I can't help but wonder if the plot, which seems intricate and elaborate in a fictional context, was actually a straightforward retelling of a standard spy-game.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brilliant Spy Novel From A Master Craftsman!, November 26, 2003
John Le Carre's disillusioned, cynical and spellbinding spy novels are so unique because they are based on a wide knowledge of international espionage. Le Carre, (pen name for David John Moore Cornwell), acquired this knowledge firsthand during his years as an operations agent for the British M15. Kim Philby, the infamous defector, actually gave Le Carre's name to the Russians. The author's professional experience and his tremendous talent as a master storyteller and superb writer make "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" one of the most brilliant novels I have read about spying and the Cold War. Graham Greene certainly agreed with me, or I with him, when he remarked that it is the best spy story he had ever read. The novel won Le Carré the Somerset Maugham Award. The novel's anti-hero, Alec Leamas, is the antithesis of the glamorous action-hero spy, James Bond. A successful espionage agent for the British during WWII, Leamus continued on with counter-intelligence operations after the war, finding it difficult to adjust to life in peacetime. He eventually became the head of Britain's Berlin Bureau at the height of the Cold War. Leamus, slowly going to seed, drinking too much, world weary, had been losing his German double agents, one by one, to East German Abteilung assassins. Finally, with the loss of his best spy, Karl Riemeck, Leamus has no agents left. His anguish at Riemeck's death is palpable. He has begun to tire of the whole spy game, as his boss at Cambridge Circus, (British Intelligence), seems to understand. Leamus is called back to London, but instead of being eased out of operations, called "coming in from the Cold," or retiring completely, he is asked to accept one last, dangerous assignment. "Control," the man Leamus reports to, asks him if he is up to "taking-out" Hans Dieter Mundt, a top East German operations agent and the man responsible for the deaths of Leamus' agents. The ploy is elaborate, and if successful, it will conclude with Mundt's own men killing him. With much planning Leamus convincingly changes his lifestyle and sets himself up as bait as a potential defector to the Eastern Block countries. As Leamus works efficiently toward his goal, two unexpected problems come-up - problems that he is unaware of until much later, when it is almost too late to resolve them. First, he falls in love with a young woman, a member of the Communist Party, who was supposed to be part of his cover, nothing more. And second, Control and the Circus have embedded plots within plots to further their end, which they don't see fit to reveal to Leamus - now operating in the dark. Le Carre portrays spying as a dirty game of acting, betrayal, lying, excruciating tension, and assumed identities. The espionage methods of East and West are the same. The only difference is their economic ideologies. There is a seemingly endless game of chess between the superpowers, and spies are as expendable as pawns. This is a short novel, 219 pages, and very tightly written. However there is much packed into this bleak tale of the espionage business. The story has more twists and turns than a rollercoaster. And the ride is well worth it!
JANA
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The definitive Cold War espionage novel, December 6, 1999
This review is from: Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Mass Market Paperback)
This book defined a genre. From the elegance of the language, to the betrayal and harsh brutality of the plot's finale, this novel set the standard against which all other espionage fiction of the Cold War would be judged. Whatever the truth of the matter, Le Carre's fiction created a world which is so real that subsequent spy novels departed from its parameters at their peril. The story at the heart of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold implicates all sides in the struggle in a hypocritical conspiriacy of betrayal and disloyalty. The message seems to be that no good deed goes unpunished and that things certainly are not what they seem. A truely great book, with characters one cares for and a deftly plotted story that both surprises and distresses the reader. The message of the book is not a pleasant one, but then the reality of Cold War espionage was not pleasant either.
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