Absolute Friends - John Le Carre

I’ve known the famous author of spy-thrillers John le Carré (né David John Moore) for many years, in the 1960s I saw the film The Spy Who Came in From the Cold made after the book with the same title, I read A Small Town in Germany in the 1970s and Russia House in the early 1990s; I found the film and the books thrilling, why didn‘t I read more of his 24 books? I‘ve realised that I‘m too simple-minded for the genre, I often have to read an ending more than once until I get the pivotal twist and that can be frustrating. When I read a review about Absolute Friends (2003), I thought I could give it a go, what intrigued me was that the story is set in Germany, for ...  Read the complete review

“Absolutely,” says Ted Mundy, often, using that typically middle-class phrase of the mid 20th century. But only a part of his background – he was educated at an English public school – conforms to this stereotype. The rest of him has been formed by a wide variety of environments and influences which combine to make him a perfect spy. Readers of John Le Carré will recognise that last phrase, the title of one of his previous novels. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War was declared over, many book reviewers lamented that this also spelled the end of the spy story. Not so. It is alive, well and thriving in the master’s hands; partly because Le Carré ...  Read the complete review