Baby, It's Cold Out There

After what’s probably been years of harping by my friend, I got around to reading John le Carré’s classic novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I can see why my friend liked it so much. This is not the James Bond spy we have grown to love. Hell, it’s not even the slightly more realistic Jason Bourne. No, le Carré’s spy is probably more akin to the real thing than anything else. How so? Because it is wrapped in the mundanities of human life. Spying is an act – you don’t really “spy on” someone. Spying is a way of life – you become a spy, you live a life that is both your own and someone else’s . . . and yet still your own.

The spy in question is Alec, whose last mission failed and now he’s in it for one last try before he’s “brought in from the cold.” A British agent, he had been in charge of the Berlin office in the 1950s, but his contacts all became compromised, tracked down and murdered by a vicious East German agent.

What this does is provide the perfect cover for Alec – assigned to a desk job back in London, he becomes despondent and irritable, until he can no longer take it. Poor and miserable, he beats up a grocery clerk and gets sent to prison. He ruins his life – on purpose – to make a clean break from the Service, and of course this draws the attention of the Communists. Sure enough, he’s contacted, and he’s soon back on the Continent, “divulging” information and leading the questioner to the point he was meant to reach: that the vicious East German officer is actually a double agent – and needs to be eliminated.

And that’s essentially it. The simplicity of it, the lack of mystery is almost tastefully boring. The crucial scenes are that of talk, of Alec playing the part of someone both disgusted with his country and himself, but desperate enough to gain his 30 pieces of silver. There is some action, some scuffling and fighting, but for the most part, that’s ancillary to the story. It’s the conversation that is the action, and le Carré does an excellent job of not only creating an organic interrogation, but maintaining a subtle menace over the whole thing. While perhaps not a page-turner, it is riveting and thrilling nonetheless.

Which is probably why my friend loves it so much. He’s the same person who found himself enjoying the detestable Phantom Menace because of the political machinations of Emperor Palpatine. Hell, that might not be the most ringing endorsement concerning my friend’s judgment (or his sanity, for that matter), but I assure you that if there was something redeemable about that movie, it was that sub-plot. And so you can trust me when I say I trust him.

However, as well as le Carré writes the “realistic” spy novel, he’s still not the greatest writer. Pacing is definitely an issue here, as is the rather flimsy love pretext (which is very important to the plot). Once Alec is engaged with the East Germans, you can appreciate the pages you read that led up to the meetings, but it comes almost half-way into the book. If le Carré is trying to show that spying is mostly boring, he does it brilliantly. And it’s not as if it’s a snore-bore (I’m not sure if “snore-bore” is clever or gay, but I’m leaving it). It’s just not what one would expect if went to the “spy novel” section of their local book store (which is probably a national chain, and which probably also doesn’t have a “spy novel” section, but you get the idea).

The joy is in the realism. Even the love story is explained in a way that, while not exactly satisfying, isn’t a complete farce. And the end is excellent. Will I read any more by le Carré? Probably not. I had read his latest book, which I reviewed a while back (The Mission Song), and I read this one, and I think I’ve had my fill. But if you have never read him, I think you would do well to put him on you “to read” list. Between him and Ian Fleming, they developed a genre that now does extremely big box-office. If there’s such a thing as a canonical spy novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is definitely on that list.