A Small Town in Germany in Espionage Aficionados

Jun 22, 2012 Feliks rated it really liked it

Shelves: genre-thrillers

'Shady doings' at the British Embassy in Bonn, Germany. That about sums it up.

This is an odd-item among LeCarre's early works; and it is often overlooked because it appears 'out-of-sequence' --even, 'disrupting' the Smiley saga--and its protagonist seems to have been the one-off appearance of admittedly a rather boring and ineffectual hero, called in to solve a singular mystery, and then never heard from again. One wonders why LeCarre wrote this minor drama at all. I confess that I myself have ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Feb 03, 2016 Kev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: spy

The small town in question is Bonn. A sleepy province down the Rhine from Cologne which, to the bafflement of many, was chosen as the Post War capital of West Germany. A minor British embassy worker, Leo Harting, has disappeared with a significant number of confidential files. Sensing a Soviet mole a spy catcher from the Foreign Office, Alan Turner, is sent to investigate. All whilst set in time when there were genuine concerns the Far-Right could rise again in Germany and ex-Nazis remained free ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jul 28, 2011 Sandi rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio, crime-mystery-thriller-suspense, read-2011

Tension filled cold war thriller set in Bonn during the late sixties. Started a bit slowly but, during the last quarter of the book, all the plot threads blended together for a really well done ending. I listened to the audio version read by one of my favorite narrators Simon Prebble

Like · see review