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.

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.

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

In London there is a small military intelligence department, in decline since its glory days during the war. It no longer runs its own teams of agents abroad, and is resentful of the Circus, which has prospered at its expense. At the height of the cold war the department decides to put an agent into East Germany to check out reports of troop build-ups and a possible new rocket site, while pretending to the Circus that they are just doing a training mission. An air of seediness and desperation to cling onto past glories pervades the whole book, as the department attempts to gain a foothold in the more glamorous side of spying again.

At the point in the book where the spy attempts to get into East Germany, I felt that the most likely show more outcome was that he would be caught, tortured and shot, the next most likely was the Circus turning up to sort the whole mess out, and there seemed virtually no possibility of him actually succeeding and getting back to the West alive ( I won't spoil things by telling you the actual outcome). An interesting story, but don't read it when you're feeling down, as it's not a fun read. show less

If anything this is grimier than The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (it's immediate predecessor, I believe). On top of the dirty business of espionage, the main characters are quite clearly incompetent, yet proud with it (it's somewhat reminiscent of the old Fry and Laurie sketches about a cosy spy ring, but with a think layer of hubris spread over). That may sounds like it should be amusing, but it's anything but - it's sad and a bit frightening (I must say, if I'd been reading these books during the Cold War, I'm sure my enjoyment would have been tempered by a paranoid chill of assumed recognition).

Again, fascinating to read for the descriptions of the UK in the early 60s, this book also introduces a whole spectrum of snobbery. show more Everyone has someone else to look down upon; sometimes this hierarchy is somewhat understandable, other times it is opaque, but it is absorbing. While the UK is still class-ridden in some ways, this book - better than any Evelyn Waugh or writer of his ilk - demonstrates quite clearly, throughout society what class meant, when it still did really mean something.

The plot has some similarities to The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - an initiating incident, then long build-up to something resembling action. The characters are beautifully depicted, and the politics of the plot are played out very subtly. Occasionally, the dialogue seemed a little florid, but that's a minor quibble. In fact, the more I think about this book, the more I like it. It doesn't quite have the 'perfectly-formed' quality of its predecessor, but it has a subtle complexity and rich context which makes it very rewarding. show less