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| Our Kind Of Traitor A NovelPosted on August 10, 2010.  The unrivaled master of spy fiction returns taut and suspenseful With A of dirty money and dirtier politics. Nearly half a century for John le Carré's limitless imagination has enthralled millions of readers and moviegoers around the Globe. From the Cold War To The bitter fruits of colonialism to unrest in the Middle East, he has Reinvented the spy novel again and again. Now, the Square Makes His early Viking With A stunning tour de force That only a craftsman of history "could caliber pen. As menacing and flawlessly paced as The Little Drummer Girl and have Morally complex as The Constant Gardener, Our Kind of Traitor IS signing the Square. . Idealistic and Gail Perry and are very much in love When They splurge was tennis vacation at a posh beach resort in Antigua. Purpose The Charm Begins to pall When a big-time Russian money Launders Their Enlist help to defect. In exchange for amnesty, Dima IS ready to rat out vory history (Russian criminal brotherhood) and exposes corruption compatriots Throughout The So-Called Legitimate Financial and Political World. Soon, The guileless couple find Themselves pawns in a deadly endgame outcome Whose Will Be Determined By The victor of the British Secret Service's ruthless internecine battles. CommentsStephan Woodridge says... Two or three summers ago a top British politician called Peter Mandelson (PM) was spotted on a luxury yacht owned by a Russian aluminium tycoon called Oleg Deripaska and PM was not the only British notable on board. JLC's 22nd novel is a brilliantly-plotted, -researched and -written novel about love, honour and betrayal. OKT is primarily an assault on Britain's ruling strata. And only secondly about the Kremlin's campaign to control Russian organized crime much as they subdued the oligarchs a decade earlier: "Share with us, or else!" The oligarchs complied, fled abroad or were jailed. Dealing with Russia's crime syndicates is harder. They are age-old brotherhoods of "honourable criminals" ("vory") living by strict codes whereby talking to, let alone dealing with the State is a sin punishable by death. But in this novel this Russian version of "omert Posted on August 12, 2010 Junior Eckman says... One of LeCarre's best of the post-Smiley books.Virtually every page contains a sentence that just takes your breath away.The ability to tell a broad sweep story while nailing the tiny details with a perfect turn of phrase puts LeCarre above all other living writers except,perhaps, Graham Swift. The story moves gently along, gathering force as it goes and as the very human characters are unveiled to us. I can't recommend it more highly. The 1 star reviews baffle me until I read them and find most are from those who think price should be determined by cost of production instead of market forces. An interesting perspective which I thought had fallen with the Berlin Wall, but these "reviewers" have never read the book as they admit. I am old-fashioned enough to judge a book by its content, not its cover price. If you agree, you will find enormous value here. Posted on August 13, 2010 Zita Avers says... John le Carr Posted on August 13, 2010 Dorian Mehan says... This was very much like his Cold War books, slow to build, then you get hooked and you follow the characters wanting to know what happens to them.However you only find out about 2 and then the book just ends.Period.No open ending of what may have happened.If this book has a sequel it will be the first time for LeCarr Posted on August 13, 2010 Tammi Kiehm says... I've read three Le Carre novels previously and was suitably satisfied and impressed.This one, however, fizzles and disappoints.The primary problem is that the story unfolds in a painfully slow and tortuous fashion, and redundancies abound. There are also a lot of Britishisms to cope with--although some are quite humorous. Add to that some gratuitous snipes and slander directed at the American intellegence community, against which Le Carre has demonstrated uncontrollable loathing in the past.But politics aside, this book is one you may want to avoid--unless you need some help falling asleep at night. Posted on August 14, 2010 Saul Sytsma says... I'm always surprised at how quickly people forget: one reviewer, disappointed by the ending of "Our Kind of Traitor." says Le Carre should come in out of the cold. Does that person not recall the tragic ending of that novel? And so it goes through all these negative reviews: everyone forgetting that JLC is not here to tell us happy-ending thriller-diller stories. He's mirroring the world as he sees it and rarely has a writer done such a fine job of doing just that. Think about it, folks: what was the last JLC novel that didn't end in tears? It's the nature of the game that it ends badly. It's a stupid game, for sure, and JLC does not hide his disdain. So live with it or go back to the pulp thriller writers. JLC is an artist. And the great news is that, according to an interview I heard recently, he's giving up on the promotional cycle that have forced him into the one-book-per-year model of publishing. JLC is going rogue: he said that he still has a lot to write and he's going to get on with it. Fantastic: I hope we see two novels a year from this maestro. Posted on August 15, 2010 Vinnie Polidori says... I have read almost every thing JLC has written ,and this is by far the most disapointing.He spends forever plodding thru and getting a tennis game completed. You know whats going to happen,you dont know how the characters wind up in the end. all in all you would be better off watching paint dry. Posted on August 15, 2010 India Nazarian says... With Le Carr Posted on August 19, 2010 Boyd Trevarthen says... You can read John le Carr Posted on August 19, 2010 Cherlyn Treherne says... John le Carre is one of those authors that everybody tells me I should read, and whom I really want to read. But his towering body of work is... a little intimidating. So I decided to start with "Our Kind of Traitor," his latest thriller. And it's a solid place to start -- new characters that don't require previous books to understand, heart-pounding suspense, and a genteel British gloss. It's an intelligent and gripping story, but at times le Carre seems to just lose his enthusiasm.. Young Oxford don Perry and his lawyer girlfriend Gail are on vacation in Antigua when they encounter Dima, a Russian millionaire with a large, grim family, a hearty love of the English, and a lavish hand with money. It turns out that he's a professional money-launderer in trouble with a mobster called The Prince. He's willing to spill everything he knows, as long as he and his family are kept safe. Enter Hector Meredith, an aging spy who runs his own little sub-agency, and who is Dima's best chance of not getting killed. But Perry and Gail "have wandered by sheer accident into a richly planted minefield," and under Hector's guidance they soon find themselves whisked on an international adventure... "Our Kind of Traitor" is a brilliant novel that's been hobbled. The first few chapters are mostly told in flashback, which saps some of the tension from the story. And the last few chapters feel as if John le Carre got tired of the story he was telling, so he slapped together an ending and pasted it on the end. So as you can guess, the best part is the middle. Le Carre's prose is smooth, genteel and distinctly British, but fractured with some gritty looks at the underbelly of civilization. The cynicism is heaped high everywhere, whether it's contemptuous looks at the British government, the corrupt banking world, or the bleak, cutthroat world of Russian mobsters. And le Carre does a pretty good job with the characters, who all feel realistic, flawed and sympathetic. Perry and Gail are a pampered, slightly self-righteous British couple who end up waaaaayyyyy in over their heads. Hector is a tweedy, outspoken old spy, while Dima is a sort of Russian Tony Soprano, whose genial exterior hides his fear and rage. "Our Kind of Traitor" is a smooth, rich thriller with its ankles shackled -- great writing, rich characters, but it suffers from a limp beginning and a slapdash ending. Posted on August 24, 2010 Leave a Comment |
