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Do You Want to Win the War on Terror, or Not?

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carré

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When the Cold War ended, a lot of espionage/thriller writers didn’t know what to do with themselves. Tom Clancy, in particular, invented new villains and resurrected old ones for the US to shadowbox with. We were the last remaining superpower and there really wasn’t anything threatening us. And then 9/11 happened. It was like plugging in an electrical socket. Overnight, there emerged a raft of anti-terrorist fiction that both purports to understand Islam (it does not) and/or the Middle East (ditto). It continues today, a […]

Brexiteers

Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carré

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In a world of constant change and rising menace, it’s good to know that John Le Carré still has it. This won’t go down as one of his great works but it’s still a pretty sharp take on the western world post-Brexit/Trump through the eyes of a disaffected anti-Russia SIS operative who has been mothballed for most of the last two decades while Britain and her American ally swung their swords in the middle east. With Vladimir Putin leading the digital charge to break up […]

Kneeling in the fragrant moist grass of the village green Clara Morrow carefully hid the Easter egg and thought about raising the dead, which she planned to do right after supper.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

My Mum is a Twat by Anoushka Warden

Bella Bella by Harvey Fierstein

Intimations by Zadie Smith

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Leviathan by Paul Auster

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Humiliated and Insulted by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Rumble Fish by SE Hinton

Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani

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The Cruelest Month – 3/5 Stars This is the third Louise Penny “Inspector Gamache” detective novel, and I think it’s a decided dip in quality from an overarching look at it. The mystery itself, quaint, small town, punctuated with poetry and art and other little considerations is perfectly interesting. At a seance, from a combination of fright and maybe poisoning, a woman is found dead. There must be an elaborate set of circumstances to come to pass to have her die, but if they were […]

When Chickens Come Home to Roost

A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarre

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John Le Carre (I can never figure out how to consistently get the accent mark to work on here, so I’m just not going to worry about it) is kind of a “warm blanket” writer for me. I love his books, especially the George Smiley ones, and I turn to them when I’m a little blue or distraught or as a palate cleanser from a more challenging book. When I saw he had a new book out I was so excited and it did not […]

Espionage: First as Farce, Then As Tragedy

The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

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I have yet to read Graham Greene’s famous spy satire Our Man in Havana, but I’m familiar with the premise and am well aware that John Le Carré is aping it here. He’s having a blast splattering colored paint on the immaculately white walls of British imperialism. Until he remembers that these characters have stories, hearts and lives too. That’s what makes The Tailor of Panama so fascinating. Transparently a satire of western intelligence work, Le Carré also paints vivid portraits of characters whose lives are impacted by […]



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