I just finished reading The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and oh my, it is fantastic. I’ve been a fan of Bond and other spy-type things for years so it seems only natural that I’m finally getting around to reading John Le Carre. The book, which takes place in Cold War Europe in the 1960s is fascinating and underlaid with fabulous plot lines that only erupt in the last twenty or so minutes of the book and bring into focus the nature right and wrong, good versus evil, and how we define those things when everything our country has put at stake is on the line.
The book was fantastic. It’s a political thriller, a spy novel, a love story, and a fantastically spun tale of the world as it was. For those of us who grew up in a post-Cold War world, free of the threat of Russia bearing down on us with promises of nuclear destruction, it’s an interesting tale that paints the world in which we never lived. The stories of the spy agencies, so unlike the modern tales of spies in TV shows like Alias, are fought on such a personal level. Allies are taken down, men go into situations in which their lives will almost surely be lost, and spies are treated as above the simples mores of right and wrong.
This is fiction at its most tense. Read this book now. It is a lesson in a culture of our world.
