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Early Le Carre is still great Le Carre. As with most of his work, if you can make it through the long set-up and make sense of the British-ism embedded in the writing, you'll be rewarded with a fine novel.
The 'small town' referenced in the title is Bonn, (West) Germany in the late 60's during the Cold War. It was a different world then, but maybe not so different since protests against an economic summit, issues related to NATO, and Russian spying are all in the story line. The plot is solid: a ...more
The 'small town' referenced in the title is Bonn, (West) Germany in the late 60's during the Cold War. It was a different world then, but maybe not so different since protests against an economic summit, issues related to NATO, and Russian spying are all in the story line. The plot is solid: a ...more
I’m glad I persevered with this! I read this once when I was younger and felt it was one of Le Carré’s weaker novels. I didn’t really get it at the time. Now I’m revisiting every novel (in order) and listening to Michael Jayston reading the first three chapters I felt just as lost and had to ‘rewind’ a couple of times but chapter 4 onwards with the appearance of Alan Turner and the investigation into what happened to Harting it improved greatly for me. I put the first few chapters down as a usef
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Jun 28, 2015
Anil Joshi
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