This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
A half-starved young Russian man claiming to be a devout Muslim, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, and a sixty-year-old scion of a failing British bank based in Hamburg form an unlikely alliance as the rival spies of Germany, England and America scent a sure kill in the "War on Terror," and converge upon the innocents.… (more)
davidpwhelan: Both books share plots that deal with mistaken identity, circumstantial evidence, war on terror, ascribing hostility to others based on race or religious background, and are well-written thrillers.
I got about halfway through this book and still could not get into it so I stopped reading. I had a hard time becoming attached to any of the characters so I really didn't care what happened. However, I think that I don't do well with Le Carre books as I always feel this way with his novels.
Excellent. I’ve loved reading le Carre starting with his Smiley books. I was watChing this movie because it had Phillip Seymour Hoffman in it and was struck by how it plotted like le Carre; and looked on IMBD to find out it was le Carre. I liked how the book spent time exploring the friction and backbiting among the agencies. And I can see how the role of Bachman would appeal to Hoffman ( )
The golden rule is, to help those we love to escape from us. ~ Friedrich von Hügel
Dedication
For my grandchildren, born and unborn
First words
A Turkish heavyweight boxing champion sauntering down a Hamburg street with his mother on his arm can scarcely be blamed for failing to notice that he is being shadowed by a skinny boy in a black coat.
Quotations
The staple of your private banker's life, Brue liked to pontificate after a scotch or two in amiable company, was not, as one might reasonably expect, cash. It wasn't bull markets, bear markets, hedge funds or derivatives. It was cock-up. It was the persistent, he would go so far as to say the permanent sound, not to put too fine an edge on it, of excrement hitting your proverbial fan. So if you didn't happen to like living in a state of unremitting siege, the odds were that private banking wasn't for you.
The driver was holding open the rear door. He was young and blond, a boy in his prime.
I am a Muslim medical student. I am tired and I wish to stay at your house.
He had the assurance of wealth but none of its arrogance. His facial features, when not battened down for professional inscrutability, were affable and, despite a lifetime in banking or because of it, refreshingly unlined.
If there are people in the world for whom espionage was ever the only possible calling, Bachmann was such a person.
Like an actor, he could blandish, charm or intimidate. He could be sweet-tongued and foul-mouthed in the same sentence.
The running feud between those determined to defend civil rights at all costs, and those determined to curtail them in the name of greater national security, was approaching critical mass.
...the fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing...
...each was searching for a solace that was not available, which was a kind of solace of its own.
Realistically yet intuitively, she believed she had come to understand who he was: a lonely rich man in the last part of his life, looking for the dignity of love.
...all the rest is fodder for the truth benders, ideologues and politopaths who ruin the earth.
Love was whatever you could put up with and still do the job.
Information is not knowledge, mind you. Information is dead meat. Only God can turn information into knowledge.
American justice, asshole. Whose do you think? Justice from the fucking hip, man. No-crap justice, that kind of justice! Justice with no fucking lawyers around to pervert the course.
To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.
Last words
Brue put his arm around her shoulders where he had always wanted to put it, but he doubted whether she knew it was there.
A half-starved young Russian man claiming to be a devout Muslim, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, and a sixty-year-old scion of a failing British bank based in Hamburg form an unlikely alliance as the rival spies of Germany, England and America scent a sure kill in the "War on Terror," and converge upon the innocents.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
Haiku summary
Lawyer; terrorist; Banker; lots and lots of spies. But who can you trust? (Noisy)