Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Great!

 

So I finished Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy a couple of days ago and I really enjoyed it. I'd been putting it off for years for some reason, but the upcoming release of the new film version of the novel spurred me to get on it.

And I should really have done so ages ago; it's a taut, beautifully written spy thriller that dispenses with the bells and whistles and instead presents an entirely believable, thoughtful thriller that takes place in the real word (or in a world constructed of such particular detail that no person without intimate familiarity with the actual world of espionage could possible quibble with its verisimilitude).

The film looks good to me, but I confess that one of the things I enjoyed about the novel, one of the things that lent it the air of realism that is has in abundance, was that the entire thing - literally the entire story - consists of (mostly washed up) intelligence workers having conversations across a table. Every bit of plot is unfolded in the context of an interview. That's almost exactly what one is told not to do in storycraft and yet it is such a big part of why Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy works as well as it does.

The plot is oddly simple, really: a mole is suspected in MI6 and (forcibly) retired George Smiley has been asked to investigate it on the sly, without official permission. He enlists a couple other people he trusts and sets out to steal documents, conduct interviews, and set tails on all the people who got him fired from the agency in the first place, any of whom could be a Russian agent. Then, through these methods and after 300 pages or so, you find out who the mole was. it isn't sexy and it isn't packed with action - it isn't about trained killers and femmes fatale - it is about over the hill intelligence agents lying to one another and how one might pick their way through those lies. It's really sort of drab and brown and rainy and cold and London and seventies; it's wonderful!

I am not the connoisseur of spy novels that I know many people (men especially) are, but I can make at least the following recommendation: 

If you are only going to read one spy novel this year, make it this one.