I haven’t read a Le Carre novel for years, so when I found a copy of Agent Running In The Field in an Anacortes bookshop for $9, I picked it up and read it on the various ferries yesterday, and then stayed up until 2 this morning while I was getting over being drunk, finishing it off.
There are Le Carre novels that end with everyone failing and dying, and those that do not. I won’t spoil the ending of this one, but it’s highly contemporary. There’s talk of Trump and Brexit, and I suppose when classics like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy were published, they were similarly of their moment.
Like every Le Carre I’ve ever read, the plot is complicated. It’s less than 300 pages and there is thus only so much room for complexity, and so things are explained mercifully within twenty pages of the end, rather than having to reread the whole thing to figure out what it meant. Or I’m getting better at understanding Le Carre, but that seems unlikely as I’m out of practice. But perhaps I’m now of an age where the constant hinting that something bad is about to happen (or has already happened) is something I’m resilient to. Or I expect…