A Legacy of Spies

If, like me, you count The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as two of your very favorite novels, well, run don't walk to your neighborhood library or book merchant and get yourself a copy of John Le Carré's latest. A retelling and a reckoning of the central plots and themes of those two earlier books, A Legacy of Spies is one-half epistolary novel built from notes and reports in the secret files of those operations and one-half first-person narrative of master spy Peter Guillam, flashing back and forth between the present day and the depths of the Cold War. The offspring of Guillam's–and George Smiley's–past sins (and triumphs) have quite literally come back to haunt them. All of it is woven together seamlessly: the story simply flies along– it's the Le Carré thriller we loved, missed, and craved.

Of course, it is Le Carré, so a dose of serious moral and political philosophy comes with the thrill. We'd have it no other way. "If I had a mission– if I was ever aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I was heartless, I was heartless for Europe." I'm not sure the character who speaks these words near the novel's end would have uttered them in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In the age of Brexit, Putin, and Trump, the character's literary creator is being sadly ironic, a tone consistent with the sadness and bitterness that pervade this late masterpiece by an old master.