I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed reading Le Carre until I started this book:
the Brit spy stuff AND
the Eastern European agent stuff.
Running Latvian agents, Estonians agents, going to Tbilitsi. Such loving descriptions of a place called Karlovy Vary, a hot springs town in Czechoslovakia got me so worked up I spent 20 min reading about it on the internet (I am a sucker for hot springs, however you can work them into the story. 🙂
I really enjoyed the first half. The middle got a little tedious … I skipped some pages, then about 2/3 through, the defining event of the whole damn book happened. The first 2/3 were just the build-up turns out. The rest of the book is figuring out what to do about the mess.
That got a little tedious also, but in the end all the good people in the book had good things happen for them, even though the long-term prognosis was a little fuzzy for everybody. … but that’s the Cold War for you!
I basically loved it!
I’ve always loved Le Carre’s writing! By the end I felt like I knew the major players better than I know of my neighbors.