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A Perfect Spy

3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 · rating details · 5,211 ratings · 197 reviews

John le Carre's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him unprecedented worldwide acclaim. Immersing readers in two parallel dramas -- one about the making of a spy, the other chronicling his seemingly imminent demise -- le Carre offers one of his richest a...more

Paperback, 608 pages

Published January 1st 2003 by Scribner Book Company (first published January 1st 1985)

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

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Feb 21, 2013 Wendy Scott rated it 1 of 5 stars

I picked up this book since it was on a list of most influential novels according to one of my issues of Mental Floss magazine, but I just couldn't force myself to get through it. I read about 100 pages of some of the most impenetrable prose, full of confusing switches in point of view, setting, and time period before I set it aside. The army of characters that dropped in like paratroopers made it hard to keep the names straight and at some point, I stopped trying. I just never got into the stor...more

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May 16, 2011 Helen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: espionage

Let me start this review with these words; this book is devastating. It is the best writing John Le Carre has ever done, and will ever do.

That's not to say that it's a better spy novel than Tinker Tailor or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; it's not. If spycraft is what you crave, it's here, but it definitely takes a back seat to everything else. In A Perfect Spy, Le Carre's writing rises easily to the level of the 20th Century's greatest authors.

After the death of his father, Magnus Pym, debo...more Let me start this review with these words; this book is devastating. It is the best writing John Le Carre has ever done, and will ever do.

That's not to say that it's a better spy novel than Tinker Tailor or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; it's not. If spycraft is what you crave, it's here, but it definitely takes a back seat to everything else. In A Perfect Spy, Le Carre's writing rises easily to the level of the 20th Century's greatest authors.

After the death of his father, Magnus Pym, debonair, flawless British spy, has disappeared with the station’s burn box. His wife, his son, his handlers, and his friends have no idea where he is, due to the fact that he has doled each of them a different piece of the truth. In the meantime, he has checked himself into a safe house, where he is determined to write a book that will set everything straight.

A Perfect Spy is largely autobiographical. Le Carre's mother vanished when he was three, in the same way that Pym loses his mother at an early age. Like Pym's father Rick, Le Carre’s father Ronnie Cornwell was a charismatic, larger-than-life con man who spent time in prison. When the young Le Carre wasn’t away at various boarding schools, (the tuition sometimes paid for with black market dried fruit), he was palling around with his father’s unsavory acquaintances. Like Pym, he worked for the British Secret Service in Switzerland and in Austria and attended Oxford. Pym is a gifted intelligence officer, but he tells everyone that what he really wants to do is write, and good God, how Le Carre writes.

At its heart, this is a book about a boy's relationship with his father. As a parent, I am achingly aware of my responsibility; children are fragile little creatures whose fates depend completely on the mercy of the adults who take care of them. For better and for worse, it is we who teach them what is right, or wrong, or normal. It's we who teach them how to love, and who to trust, it's we who twist and shape their vulnerable little psyches. And it is we who are capable of damaging them the most. Rick loves his son, and his son loves him, and it is painfully clear how this criminally self-absorbed and self-deluding narcissist destroys "the natural humanity" in little Magnus, turning him into the perfect spy of the title. How Le Carre was able to write this stuff down without wetting every page of the manuscript with his tears is a mystery to me.

With all that, the book is surprisingly funny, full of mocking self-deprecation and gorgeous British slang. The facts make wonderful fiction. There are hilarious letters from Rick to his son and lovingly recreated conversations between his father's business associates. It is also surprisingly sexy, as the young Pym navigates between lust and yearning, all things we don't expect from John Le Carre.

A Perfect Spy is a breathtaking act of catharsis, warm and funny, wry and rueful, unexpectedly, nakedly human. Instead of burying his painful past, Mr. Le Carre illuminates it for us as a masterpiece of fiction. Happily, he has come to terms with his father, resurrecting him for us with humor and with love. (less)

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Feb 07, 2009 Juanita Rice rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have read this book almost countless times. I have tried to make schematics of its complex structure, to understand the grand architectonics upon which Le Carre built an absolute monument to the grand art of running and being an "agent."

The narrative time from the first action of the novel to its last may be something less than a month, but the lives it recounts cover some sixty complicated years. As the "perfect spy" ironically and compulsively, angrily and lovingly, pens a series of biograp...more

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Dec 18, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it 5 of 5 stars

I recently found a review of this book ( here ) that notes that A Perfect Spy is a kind of what-if autobiographical account of John LeCarre himself (fictionalized, obviously). Whether this is or is not the case, this is one of the best novels I've read this year.

Magnus Pym, intelligence agent for the British, has gone to London after the news of his father Rick's death. He is supposed to return to Vienna, where he and his wife Mary are currently stationed, but instead he sends his luggage on ho...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Smcleish rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in August 2001.

One of le Carré's non-Smiley novels, A Perfect Spy is far more about the psychological pressures which create a secret agent than about the mechanics of spying itself. It is part of le Carré's move away from writing genre thrillers that really began with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Magnus Pym is quite a senior operational officer, who has been running networks of British spies in Czechoslovakia for many years. After the death of his father Ric...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This story centres on a father, Rick, and son, Magnus, relationship and its overall effects on the son on his chosen path in life. Rick Pym is a con man, a very convincing con man with able lieutenants in Syd, Perce, Muspole, and Cudlove, together they con everyone about everything imaginable taking Liberal politicians, the clergy, educational establishment right up to the grandest hotels in the land, both at home and abroad. There are women, girls, lovelies they are called all through the story...more This story centres on a father, Rick, and son, Magnus, relationship and its overall effects on the son on his chosen path in life. Rick Pym is a con man, a very convincing con man with able lieutenants in Syd, Perce, Muspole, and Cudlove, together they con everyone about everything imaginable taking Liberal politicians, the clergy, educational establishment right up to the grandest hotels in the land, both at home and abroad. There are women, girls, lovelies they are called all through the story from Lippsie to Mary to Belinda, Jemima , Sabina, with many more flitting across the story.

The story itself is told by Magnus Pym to his own son Tom as he jots down everything he can remember in a secluded room by the sea to write a book of his life. And his own life mirrors that of his con man father Rick but in a very different way. Magnus, helped by funds from his father’s ill-gotten gains goes from public school to university but his father’s reputation as well as helping Magnus’s is also a hindrance and continues to be so until Ricks death where even then there is a little difficulty with liquidity meaning his father had no funds to pay for his own funeral.

Rick wants his son to read law, become a judge, one of the finest, in fact Magnum becomes a spy and a very good one, reaching the high echelons of the spying establishment. His controller is Jack Brotherhood, himself a very good spy from the days of WW2 but there is also Axel a mysterious figure Magnus met when in a kind of hostel in Austria and both Axel and Jack accompany Magnus throughout the story.

A story that spans many countries from England, Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, America and back to England. But the story takes some reading as chapter after chapter takes us to the present tense then back to how we get to the present tense and I must admit at times I found it tiresome following the flow of the story. But as with Le Carre’s books there are many twists and turns that have you re-reading paragraphs to keep up with the plot. A long book but none the less well written if a little punishing at times to keep up with the flow, I believe the character of Rick Pym was moulded from some elements of Le Carre’s own father.
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Sep 20, 2012 T.L. Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Perfect Spy by John LeCarré is an extremely well crafted novel that uses memory and memoire to produce a non-linear narrative. The book tells the tale of British Intelligence Officer Magnus Pym, who mysteriously goes AWOL after his father's death and may, or may not, have been a double agent. LeCarré himself has described The Perfect Spy as his "most autobiographical book", which is clearly only the case up to the point of inspiration. It is extremely well told, though perhaps a bit slow to...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Matthew Kresal rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are novels which can only be described by a single word: epic. John le Carre's A Perfect Spy, published originally in 1986, is one of those novels to be certain. It is a tale that stretches right across half the twentieth century in the form of the life of Magnus Pym, the perfect spy of the novel's title. The novel is also, in fine le Carre tradition, a fine cross between the spy thriller and a human drama and is all the better for it.

The story revolves around the life and times of Britis...more There are novels which can only be described by a single word: epic. John le Carre's A Perfect Spy, published originally in 1986, is one of those novels to be certain. It is a tale that stretches right across half the twentieth century in the form of the life of Magnus Pym, the perfect spy of the novel's title. The novel is also, in fine le Carre tradition, a fine cross between the spy thriller and a human drama and is all the better for it.

The story revolves around the life and times of British intelligence officer Magnus Pym from his childhood to then present day of the mid-late 1980's. As the novel reveals piece by piece Magnus's lie has been nothing but one large training ground for a future spy starting with his childhood under his conman father Ricky to years in Switzerland as a side effect of one of his father's scams that leads to him meeting his two mentors in the world of Cold War espionage right through to the then present dy. The picture that emerges is of a man forced to spend his entire life lying and betraying sometimes out of circumstance and other times just to survive with the consequence of him becoming "a perfect spy". Magnus is also a man who is ultimately always on the run from everyone including himself. All of this means that Pym is also quite possibly the best in the long tradition of le Carre's strong main characters.

A Perfect Spy also features some of le Carre's best supporting characters as well perhaps the best of which is Magnus' father Ricky who is based (by the author's own admission) on his own father. Ricky Pym is the man most responsible for his son's transformation into "a perfect spy" as a man who drifts in and out of his son's life with one con after another. Ricky is a man capable of great charisma and of being sentimental with those around him but never capable of really giving himself to any one person including Magnus himself. Much of the novel is spent as Magnus remembers his life with his father so that the theme of a son trying to figure out his relationship with his father and how it as affected his other relationships is as much a part of the novel as the spy thriller aspects are.

There are many other fine supporting characters as well of course. There is Axel and Jack Brotherhood as the two men who become mentors to a young Magnus is the game of Cold War espionage and who, as a result of their actions and attitudes, make fine literary contrasts to one another. There is Magnus's wife Mary who finds herself caught up in the world of her husband's creation and who, in the end, is trying to find her husband both physically and emotionally. There are Ricky Pym's partners in crime such as Syd Lemons who also drift in and out of Magnus's life as well or the group of CIA men who try to convince the British that Pym is not all that he seems. Each of these characters (and many others as well of course) makes for fine portraits of those who in some size, shape or form fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is the life of Magnus Pym.

For a jigsaw puzzle is exactly what Magnus Pym's life, and by consequence the novel itself, is. In chapters that virtually alternate across the 590 pages the novel switches between the present where Brotherhood and Mary search for Pym plus try to cope with what he has done and the past as Pym in letters to his son Tom (and in an oddly detached third person perspective as well) recounts his childhood and rise in British intelligence. The result is a blend of spy thriller (as the hunt for Pym intensifies along with proof of his double life) and the memoirs of a Pym who seems to fast be approaching the end of his road. In other words the present chapters are used to set up the puzzle of events that Pym is about to recount from his past. The sections where Pym recounts his past come across as much stream of consciousness as Pym seems to float from one aspect of his life to another in a not always chronological or even logical for that matter and (and least in the earliest parts chronologically) come from the author's own life as well. The result is a jigsaw puzzle that, with its lengthy chapters and at times stream of consciousness narrative, that requires the reader to pay quite a bit of attention and spend quite a bit of time on it as well (that is coming from someone who is generally a fast reader and just spent three plus months reading this). The result though is a rewarding work to read even if it is not for all tastes.

While the narrative style and page count might be off putting to some out there for others A Perfect Spy is a fine read and perhaps le Carre's best novel. From perhaps the strongest of le Carre's main characters in Magnus Pym to his fine cast of supporting characters (especially Ricky Pym) the novel is full of real flesh and blood human characters. It is also a fascinating trip down the history of the Cold War yet it is more then just that. It is also a trip down the jigsaw puzzle of what le Carre himself has called "the secret path": the path of the spy, the man who must lie and betray to survive. As much a human drama as a spy thriller A Perfect Spy isn't to be missed. (less)

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Nov 21, 2010 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

My holiday standby. Allegedly an autobiographical work, this took the cahracterisation that was missing in the novel above and showed how it really should be done. Infact, it was almost over-done by le Carre, as the main players in this book slowly unwound their past histories and interweaving destinies for us to ponder over. Le Carre doesn’t need set pieces to build suspense and action, as this happens in the thoughts and deeds of his people. What motivates them, how they became what they are,...more

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Aug 27, 2010 Jeffrey rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read A Perfect Spy (originally published in 1986) a half-dozen times in my teens and twenties but never considered Pym a traitor until I read it again in my forties.

What changed? Well certainly not the text. More likely, I grew from attempting to be a cosmopolitan to being an ardent patriot.

We are patriots because we are afraid to be cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan because we are afraid to be patriots.

No doubt turning forty and having a third-dozen children changes one's focus.

I remember taking A P

...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Perry Whitford rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Capitalists and Communists alike

The perfect spy novel in my opinion. No tradecraft in that statement, just fact.

The subtlety and nuance of the characterisation by Le Carre here is something to marvel at; 600 pages and you could pull an example of his mastery from any paragraph on any page, the pitch is that perfect throughout. The protagonist, Magnus Pym, is an incredible creation, utterly empty and containing multitudes at the same time. The supporting cast are just as memorable, realer than life. Rick Pym, Magnus's con-man...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Steve Mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Magnus Pym is the Secret Intelligence Service’s principle case officer running agents across Eastern Europe, currently from Vienna. Returning to the UK for his father’s funeral Pym fails to make his return flight and disappears as if into thin air. The problem is the CIA has long suspected Pym of being a Czech agent and a traitor. Is the CIA correct and Pym has defected; or planning to defect? Is the British defence that he is being framed by the Czechs and this is a ruse to convince the CIA of...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Andrew Williams rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some people - my agent for one - rate this le Carre's best book. It is certainly his most personal, in particular, the resemblance between Rick Pym and le Carre's own father has been commented on many times. I loved it. I admire in particular his skill at holding interest, keeping up the pace with a book that is really a reflection on the past - Magnus looking back. The structure cleverly keeps the present and past in parallel - and, somehow, le Carre is able to shift the narrative element that...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Coinboy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Le Carre transcends genre here, like he did in The Constant Gardener. This is a spy novel, and not. If you want to read a story about a son who followed his father into a life of deception, then let me hand you this. But don't tell me you won't try it because you don't read spy novels.

There were a few halting times when I had trouble following the origins of the protagonist's (not hero, precisely) story. Much of the prime meat of his story was rushed in the final 75 pages or so. But the languag...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Thomas rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, fiction

Le Carre does Dickens...but he's not Dickens. There are two intertwined narratives in the book, one describing the main character's background and childhood (which, as has been noted, shares many details with the author's own childhood), the other describing his contemporary dilemma as a spy on the run. The contemporary man-hunt stuff is fun, thrilling, suspenseful; it would have made a good spy novel in itself with a little more development. The sections dealing with the character's childhood a...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Sujeetha rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mind-blowing

OK! Where do I begin to write about this superbly crafted novel. They do not write spy stories like this anymore, which is a shame. Le Carre has a done a good job crafting the characters with minute precision, but that is not even the highlight of the story. The pinnacle is his non-linear storytelling structure, oft-times mixing the past with present. It is an intricate plot and I wish any film-maker who wants to make the film does it ample justice. You cannot help but fall in love with the prot...more

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Jul 25, 2011 August rated it 3 of 5 stars

Philip Roth, himself, claims on the book's cover that it is "the best English novel since the war". I find that hard to believe, but I can understand why Roth would like it. It is structurally sound and Magnus Pym, the perfect spy, is a memorable character. Personally, though, I wasn't really impressed. It is a long book (700pages), jumping back and forth in time, lots of characters and a narrator who, somewhat schizophrenically, never refers to himself using the first-person singular pronoun. W...more

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May 02, 2012 Marc rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a wonderful book, a Cold War spy novel in which all of the espionage occurs offstage, and where the dramatic tension derives almost entirely from domestic and family affairs. The prose is quintessential le Carre--lots of cloak-and-dagger jargon effortlessly interwoven with pithy dialogue and vivid description--but the book's complex structure and ambition are unlike anything else of his that I've read. For sheer thrills and classic spy intrigue, this is no match for The Spy Who Came in f...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Phani Tholeti rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: don-t-even-see, espionage-spy-intelligencce, not-worth-it

Misnomer. Epic boring. Dull, drab and unnecessarily prolonged and wordy and descriptive and ... I wanted one word to describe this so called "autobiographical" epic novel. If its to be autobiographical, at least it should have been mentioned, I'd have given it a skip. But I really can write a book about how Magnum Pym's son would cry and curse his father trying the jumbled up, incomprehensibly dense and wordy details about his relationship with his father.
When you have read about the book, and s...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Wale rated it 1 of 5 stars

I got through half-way in this book and had to drop it. What did it for me were the long narratives of flashbacks into the main character's past which I suppose were meant to unveil gradually to the reader who the main character really was and the ultimate motives behind his actions. They were quite murky and tedious and I didn't have the patience to really delve into them. I my opinion they detracted from the clarity and fluidity that should be salient traits of any good prose (from the Latin w...more

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Feb 18, 2011 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A Complete Masterpiece. The funny thing about this book was the way it ensnares the reader. It began slowly, almost boring, but eventually I became so intrigued by Pym and who he really was that I couldn't put the book down. Pym had such a sadness throughout the story, his childhood especially but the relationship between he and his father was the most interesting. It's said that this work is largely auto-biographical of le Carré (his father was something of a con-artist and he never really knew...more

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Aug 26, 2010 Sue rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, spy, read-in-2010, list-francine-prose

Was very helpful to read other Goodreads comments after starting the book as I found it quite confusing. But really liked it once I got used to the deuces: two people Pym was writing to (Tom/Jack), the switching of persons telling the story (first person/third person), and the two time periods (past/present). Hated the ending but it made perfect sense. Also, as the book unfolded, Pym's profound decisions became clear too.

My question at the end was this: how did he become who he was? First thoug...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Jane Mackie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century-fiction

This book disappointed me slightly. I am a le Carre fan, and read another author speaking about him. She said that she'd been at a dinner party where all of the guests claimed this as their favorite book, and so of course had rushed home to read it, and was then bowled over. Anyone who can remind me who this author was (I think the piece was in Newsweek or something), please do; I'd like to re-read her recommendation. For my part, I found it less suspenseful and more difficult to follow than som...more

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Jan 03, 2012 Pat Gerber-Relf rated it 4 of 5 stars

I quite like this book after getting into it and discovering who is who. John le Carré seems to have the impression that we have all had connections with the British Secret Service at some time in our life and know how things work. It tells the story of a spy, his background, his family, and how he got into the business. His family was not exactly pefect, the father not exactly a good example for the son to live up to, and may explain why the spy was quite clever in his way. I believe the book w...more

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Sep 09, 2009 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is supposed to be Le Carre’s best book and probably my favourite of the four I’ve read so far. It is more a piece of reflective literature than Cold War thriller. The novel charts the life and career of Magnus Pym and in particular his relationship as a boy and young man with his confidence trickster father. These flashbacks are juxtaposed with the present where as a diplomat and double agent he has gone missing from the British authorities as well as his Czech controller.

As with Le Carre’s...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Julie Gomstyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

As was my experience with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the beginning of this book was a little tough to get through, because Le Carre's prose can be pretty dense. But once I got past the first 40 pages or so, I couldn't put this down. The story moves backward and forward in time, jumping between the telling of Magnus Pym's life (as he retells in in a manuscript for his son) and scenes of the people who are trying to find him in present-day. It's not your conventional thriller, but it's very suspen...more

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Jun 23, 2011 Christer Karlsson rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a very sad and thoroughly believable story, perceptive, but it might start a little slow. The story is told with intense feelings, a beautiful language and stinging wit that draws the reader into the mind of Magnus Pym, traitor. It moves backward and forward in time, recording crises-ridden events from the viewpoints of numerous characters. It is well worth the read, it might not be as catching as the earlier novels like Tinker Tailor or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but it is a sto...more

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Jul 11, 2010 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

The general public may recognize the name Ian Fleming better than John Le Carre. That's their loss. Le Carre is the true master of the spy novel because it focuses on the most important part of espionage...the psychology. This book looks at the psychology of the narrator and what led him into the espionage business, and how it affected the rest of his life. A great novel. Le Carre's best? I don't think so, but still very strong. It is definitely worth reading for the autobiographical elements th...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Melmac rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks

The narration performed by Michael Jayston was top notch some of the best character work I've heard. The story on the other hand I found to be a hard slog. For starters it took me a little while to get my head around the change in time and perspective also I found it a bit repetitve. I thinkt he whole time I was expecting something big to happen to Pym but it never did it was more about his identity etc which I just found a bit yawn inducing. My first Le Carre novel and I just though it would be...more

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May 13, 2013 Brett rated it 5 of 5 stars

Simply a stellar book, and I can really see why several people rate this as LeCarre's best.

I won't give away too much of the plot besides what is in the blurb -- Magnus Pym is a missing spy, presumed defected.The plotline alternates between his Firm pursuers/longtime friends, and Pym himself, who is writing a biographical novel about his upbringing with his con-man father. In this way we have 2 converging plotlines: Pym's, which starts as a child and works toward present-day; and the pursuers, s...more

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About John le Carré

John le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), is an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré has resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Great Britain, for more than forty years where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land's End.

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Books by John le Carré

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (George Smiley, #5)

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley #3)

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“Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.” — 37 people liked it

“He was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment.” — 1 person liked it

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