The Looking Glass War

Like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, this books predecessor in the George Smiley series, I enjoyed this one very much. The thing that struck me about this entry into the Smiley series is that there is an interesting similarity in theme between this book and the Slow Horses series. In the Slow Horses series, we have the professional "regular" spies at The Park, and then we have the outcast/incompetent spies at Slough House. Here, we have the professional "regular" spies at the Circus, where Smiley is situated. But the book's primary focus is on the old washed-up spies at The Department. These spies are the leftovers from WW II military spying that no one seems to know what to do with. As Control, head of the Circus, says, "It's not my show more fault they've taken so long to die." In the meantime the real spies make use of them for research and analysis while the Department spies are longing for an "operation" of their own.
They get their wish when an old asset from their WW II days provides them with some information that suggests that Russia may be establishing a missile base in East Germany. The Department sends an agent to Finland to pick up some film that may help establish the validity of this information. When that agent is killed in a hit and run accident, the Department views this not as an accident, but as a murder, and thus confirmation that they are onto something.
For the first part of their operation they send Avery, their newest agent, to Finland to claim the body and retrieve the film canister. Avery is inexperienced and untrained, and flubs the assignment in a multitude of ways. I can imagine le Carre had great fun writing the humorous scenes as Avery, who has been assigned the role of the dead agent's next of kin there to claim the body, is unable to recall the age of the deceased, can't recall if he's supposed to be the half-brother or the step-brother, is not sure why he's the next of kin instead of the mother and so on. It only gets worse when the Finnish police point out that the deceased's passport is a forgery and is invalid.
A chagrined Avery returns to the Department (without the film he was sent for), but by that time it doesn't matter. The Department has decided to go with a full-fledged operation. They pull back into service another WW II vet, Frederick Leiser, a German-speaking Pole with experience in radio operations, and begin training to insert him into East Germany for a first hand investigation into whether a missile base has been established. The bulk of the book consists of the training for this operation, and the actual venture into East Germany. This part of the book is all seriousness, and there is not much humor. It's suspenseful, but how much competence can we expect from the Department?
In the Introduction to the edition of the book I read, le Carre states that after the success of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, he felt he had the right to experiment, and he wanted to "describe a Secret Service that is really not very good at all; that is eking out its wartime glory; that is feeding itself on Little England fantasies." Apparently, the British reading public was not ready for this, and the book was, initially at least, not very well-received in England.
I thought the book was excellent. I look forward to reading the next in the Smiley series.

4 stars show less

Rereading after fifty years this fourth of the Smiley series, I am struck by the quality of Le Carre's writing: the vivid creation of scene and mood, the deft characterization, the subtle manipulation of point of view. The scathing satire exposing the shoddiness of a service addicted to fantasies of past glory captures the Brexit era as accurately as it captures the post-Suez years.

I enjoy le Carre's novels for a single thing - his portrayal of intelligence agencies and spies is rather unique (or maybe was, I do not know if there are other authors writing spy novels in similar way). They are all shown as civil servants, part of the mighty bureaucratic machine who risk their lives (at least some of them) but in general live rather dull or maybe better said every-day lives with a little rush of adrenaline when action kicks in. They are all expendable (operations more than others) and their puppet masters are more than willing to sacrifice them just to see what will happen next.

While I understand that not every spy is James Bond (and, yes I am aware of le Carre's view of James Bond, although his own "scalp-hunters" show more are no better) it is very interesting to imagine every civil servant or minor official you meet in the street as a secret agent working for a boss unlike your own - one who wants results no matter the situation.

And what happens when that overachieving boss decides that his department needs revitalization and takes upon himself to organize a grand operation that will bring back the glory days? What if in the background another boss, of more successful department, decides to swallow up this small unit of men and in order to do that orchestrates things so that operational element gets terminated in process? What if in general you cannot trust anyone and maybe those closest to you are the same people that want you put down?

Le Carre's novel reads like a shadowy conflict between two sections in the same department store. They are all well and polite but very much ready to back-stab each other on the first opportunity. And when operations guys end up captured or worse what happens to their respective directors? Well they advance, because it was war rules you know and poor chaps did not get the break .... but hey life goes on right? No need to dwell on negative thoughts.

Interesting novel, recommended to all fans of spy literature. show less

Le Carré does a fantastic job of keeping a tension between love, play and game where political aspirations clash with friendships, war games with love and compassion. The final chapters are gripping as cynicism drips off the pages, and falsity, lies and indifference collide with loyalty, fear and frailties. It's a masterful piece which sheds light on the constructs - mirrors - that we build to justify our actions and busy our lives.

In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, LeCarré made an effort to show the ugly, amoral side of the intelligence game. Dissatisfied with the effect (since some readers still regarded some of the characters as heroic), he wrote this bleak spy yarn.

Rather than the relatively competent intelligence agency known as the Circus (basically MI6), this book centers on “The Department.” The Department is a pathetic remnant of an agency that ran military intelligence during WWII. It is now filled with stodgy, self-important old men (and one young man) who do very little besides archive the occasional intelligence report and dream of the good old days as the Circus gradually takes over more and more of what they used to handle (Smiley, Control, show more and others from the Circus make some appearances as the two agencies interact).

When a potentially important report of highly questionable authenticity crosses the director’s desk he sees it as an opportunity to run an operation and return to the glory days (the way it was “during the war”). What follows is an incredible display of incompetence and disregard for human life driven by pride, nostalgia, and inter-agency jealousy. You could almost call it a farce, but it isn’t at all funny…just pathetic and depressing.

Overall, the book is well-written, and the characters ring sadly true…it’s just incredibly bleak. show less

I had read so many bad things about this novel that I went into it expecting very little. As it turned out, I did not need to worry - while it is indeed a very different novel from "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", it is actually a pretty good novel.

Somewhere outside of the regular organization of the Circus, which we saw in the previous novels in the series, is the Department - an old part of the spy game that does not seem to have moved on from the war. They are still tolerated and allowed to believe themselves to still be at the top of their game. It all goes pretty smoothly - they are ignored, their job is of little consequence until they manage to lose an agent and decide to solve their issues on their own. That would have been show more a great starting point for a comedy but the novel is anything up.

While reading the book I often wondered if le Carré meant to make everyone so incompetent. Having finished the book I believe that this was part of the point of the book - while the Circus made some questionable choices in the previous book, they never sounded as if they are playing a war game. The members of the Department often make decisions based on guesses and illogical outcomes - and it goes all the way to deciding to leave an agent behind in enemy territory.

Just like with the previous novel, Smiley is mostly missing from the novel - he shows up a bit more here but he is still on the sidelines. But it builds on top of his previous work and it adds to his character.

If you read this novel on its own, it is a cynical look at the world of espionage and at people living in the past who made decisions about other people. If you read it as part of the series, it is a stark counterpart to "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" - while people die in both novels, the reasons and the details are stellar opposites. It as spycraft in the previous novel; it is sheer carelessness and incompetence here. show less

John le Carré's follow-up to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was written, according to its author, in reaction to the accolades given Spy for exposing the world of espionage. le Carré himself denied that and felt that the novel had glamorized what was a decidedly unglamorous business. Thus The Looking Glass War, in which he sought to portray "the muddle and futility that were so much closer to life," as he says in the introduction to the work. He did a brilliant job, but the novel flopped precisely for that reason. Nobody, particularly in England, wanted to hear it, at least not in 1965.

The story follows the efforts of an increasingly irrelevant British intelligence department (simply called "the Department" by pretty much show more everyone) charged with handling military intelligence to make itself relevant once more. After an agent dies while trying to bring home film purporting to show Soviet missiles being installed in East Germany, the Department recruits and trains a war-time agent to infiltrate the country and obtain evidence. But success depends on keeping other intelligence organizations at arm's length even while begging favors from them. Particularly, the powerful Circus (home to George Smiley and his boss Control) must not know what the Department is doing. In the end, they succeed in inserting the agent into East Germany, but the plan goes wrong, and Smiley is sent in to shut it down.

This is not an upbeat tale. It is, as le Carré said, about "muddle and futility" and also about self-serving bureaucrats and their willingness to use and even sacrifice others in order to promote their careers. For all that it wasn't popular at the time, it's a good read all these decades later, and just might have some symbolic relevance for today. show less