Single & Single

Le Carré's latest, and if the spy genre has suffered with the collapse of the Cold War, the best of it, in the hands of someone like Le Carré, transposes nicely to the modern world of organized crime, huge profits from drugs, and money laundering by "respectable" bankers and lawyers. Such is the house of Single and Single which establishes, controls, and manipulates labyrinths of holding companies that tie into legitimate business and ventures, and complex ownerships across any number of countries. But it is a cutthroat world and one where allegiances and alliances are fragile and ever subject to the lure of even greater wealth, control, and power, often exercised through complete and easy violence. I am reminded of a conversation I show more had a couple of years ago when I was at Stanford U to participate in a seminar on APEC. One of the other participants was a former CIA agent and we chatted over breakfast. He noted that with the demise of the Cold War, more and more of the CIA's energies are focussed on trying to deal with organized crime with the Italian mafia compounded by the Latin American drug lords and the Russian mafia and crime families. It struck me when he said that the world was now incomparably more dangerous; when it was the CIA and the KGB, there were certain "rules of the game" that were understood in terms, for instance of the levels of violence that would be used or tolerated and where they might be applied; however, with the rise of the multinational crime syndicates, there were no rules, everyone was fair game, violence could arrive at any time, any place and it would be remorseless.

Single & Single is headed by Tiger, a self-made man who enjoys immensely the power of his position and the great wealth it confers. His pride is his son Oliver whom he considers the heir apparent, but when Oliver discovers the true purpose of the company, he turns informant and then disappears into a witness protection program. Not informant enough to bring Tiger down, but enough to whet the appetite of Nat Brock of HM Customs Service, and someone determined to root out the dishonest among politicians and officials of all stripes. But Oliver's cover is blown and then he discovers that Single & Single is besieged and collapsing and that his father is in great personal danger. Throughout Oliver is beset by conflicting emotions: he does not doubt that he did the right thing in turning to the authorities, and as much as despises what his father represents, and even the person he is, he cannot deny the filial bond and so he risks his life in tracking his father down to the lair of the enemy in a mounting climax to the story. And there, I think, Oliver is able to exorcise the ghosts once and for all. As he talks and argues with Georgian criminals holding his father who cannot resist trying to commandeer the discussion, Oliver realizes:

You have revealed the full scale of your immense, infinite nothingness. At the brink of death, you have nothing to plead but your stupefying triviality.

And at the end:

The answer was as clear to him as the question. That he had found it, and it didn't exist. He had arrived at the last, most hidden room of his search, he had prized open the most top-secret box, and it was empty. Tiger's secret was that he had no secret.

Much has been made in reviews about the fact that Le Carré did not get along with his own father who was a con man and swindler who deserted his family. Maybe this novel was cathartic for him. It certainly deals with betrayal, but the betrayal is on both sides: Oliver's is against his father in the "real world" of police and authorities; Tiger's is against the morality that Oliver feels. So does the latter justify the former? I think Le Carré says it does. This is not Le Carré at his best, and the ending is a little hollywood in style, but it is still a good read. show less

Another great Le Carre. One of the first after the wall came down, and who the bad guys are isn't as easy to decipher! I'm sure that Oliver's relationship with Tiger has some beginnings in Le Carre's own crazy relationship with his own father.

An absorbing enough thriller, with complex shenanigans in the world of corrupt dealings between loathsome Russian and Georgian criminal low-life and an equally despicable money laundering business in London. Betrayals by family members on both sides result in a comeuppance for all.
My first Le Carre novel, and a reminder that espionage thrillers rank rather low on my list of reading preferences. Nonetheless, Le Carre is a competent story teller.

On a Turkish hillside, ex-Communist mobsters shatter the skull of a corrupt English lawyer. In a sleepy English village, the authorities ask a lonely children's magician how come £5,000,030 sterling just got anonymously deposited in his baby daughter's bank account. With machine-like logic and soulful literary magic, John le Carré links these two events in Single & Single, a stay-up-all-night thriller.

The magician is Oliver Single, the tormented son of Tiger Single, a rogue banker the Financial Times calls "the knight errant of Gorbachev's New East." In fact, Tiger is sinking his fangs into that crucial one-tenth of world trade free of pesky regulations--illegal drugs--and secretly selling donated disaster-relief blood. Mum's the word show more in Tiger's mob: as the lawyer's executioner notes, "Is not convenient to hear that American capitalists are bleeding poor nations literally."

Oliver comes in from the cold to help spymaster Brock track Tiger down. That £30 sterling signified Judas's silver, but Oliver yearns to save Tiger's life, too. Le Carré wizardly juggles dozens of characters in a zigzag, globetrotting plot. You-are-there realism, narrative drive, pitch-perfect dialog--why can't movies be this good? Like lightning, le Carré's metaphors both dazzle and blazingly illuminate the world.

Ex-spy le Carré was there when the Berlin Wall went up, and his spy craft is legendarily realistic. His female spy/love interest is less so--the opposite of a femme fatale, she might be termed a "deus sex machina." But the book's crucial father-son relationship is quite real, because, like the irresistible villain of A Perfect Spy, Tiger is based on le Carré's own con-man dad. The cold war is over, but le Carré is hot. And he will endure. --Tim Appelo

In breve
La storia di Tiger Single, erede di uno studio legale coinvolto in malversazioni e abusi, che deciderà di passare dalla parte della autorità e divenire un informatore in piena regola.

Il libro
Un avvocato dello studio legale Single & Single viene ucciso su una collina turca. Un mago animatore di feste per bambini viene convocato in piena notte dalla sua banca per spiegare un monumentale versamento di denaro. Una nave mercantile russa viene fermata nel Mar Nero. Un noto finanziere londinese scompare nel nulla. Come e perché questi fatti sono collegati tra loro? Single & Single lo svela in una complessa storia incentrata sul tradimento, sull'affetto filiale, sulla moralità, o meno, dei commerci. Tiger Single, fondatore dello studio Single & Single, è uno spavaldo, carismatico, arrogante, genio del riciclaggio di denaro sporco. Evgenij Orlov, leggendario mafioso moscovita che vende e compra di tutto, è il suo miglior cliente. Oliver, figlio di Tiger cresciuto nell'adorazione del padre, è un moderno eroe che prima obbedisce ciecamente al padre per amore, poi lo tradisce per necessità, infine tenta di salvarlo sempre per amore. Un ottimo thriller che si dipana tra affari legittimi e commerci criminali, tra complicità familiari e tradimenti.

Approfondimento
Tiger Single, fondatore e animatore dello studio Single & Single, è un tipo spavaldo, carismatico, arrogante, tortuoso, uomo del nostro tempo e immediatamente riconoscibile per quel che è: un predatore. Nonostante sia un insopportabile bastardo, è anche, nella sua arroganza, assolutamente adorabile. Ed è anche, Dio ci aiuti, un missionario, pronto a convertire i barbari in… profitto. È pronto a commerciare ogni cosa, dall'animo umano al buon sangue caucasico, prelevato dalle vene di russi esausti e in piena bancarotta. Il suo miglior cliente è Evgenij Orlov, un leggendario malavitoso moscovita che illecitamente commercia in tutto; Tiger è il suo spacciatore personale, specializzato nella pulizia di guadagni sospetti e nella creazione delle "migliori scappatoie legali che la ricchezza illecita può comprare". Tiger ha previsto che gli succeda Oliver, il figlio, e appena possibile lo fa entrare nello studio: cresciuto nell'adorazione del padre, l’ammirazione di Oliver presto si trasforma in disillusione dopo aver capito di quali affari si deve occupare. Innamoratosi della figlia di Orlov, che lo spinge a prendere posizione verso gli orrendi affari dei genitori, il principe ereditario di Single & Single diventa informatore e contatta le autorità. Passano cinque anni: Oliver, pieno di rabbia verso il padre e di rimorsi per ciò che ha fatto, conduce una nuova vita fino a quando succedono, improvvisamente, cose sconcertanti: qualcuno deposita 5 milioni e 30 sterline sul conto intestato a sua figlia, alla sua ex moglie vengono consegnate trenta rose rosse, un socio dello studio viene barbaramente assassinato in Turchia e la cassetta con la ripresa dell'omicidio lasciata sul posto, e Tiger Single scompare. Oliver deve tornare a un mondo che pensava di essersi lasciato definitivamente alle spalle. Considerato dalla critica uno dei migliori romanzi di le Carré, Single & Single racconta una storia densissima incentrata sul tradimento, sul rapporto tra padri e figli e sulla nozione contemporanea di affari e moralità. Scritto con la consueta maestria, ci lascia in eredità un eroe che difficilmente dimenticheremo, combattuto tra l'amore e la vergogna per il padre, la sua diversa moralità e il senso di colpa per quel che è stato costretto a fare. show less

Perhaps the best of Le Carre's post-Cold War novels (at least the ones I have read); the Oliver Hawthorne character is one of the most compelling "amateurs-thrust-into-international-intrigue" protagonists.

In some ways the best, in some ways one of the worst of le Carré's books. The best, in that it deals with a genuine sense of outrage against the corruption that runs like a rotten seam through the British Establishment. The setting (finance) is something I know a little about, and it rings pretty true. One of the worst of his books, because we've seen it all before: deception on several levels, the self-doubt and angst that come with deception, and the love of a good woman. But it doesn't stop Oliver from being one of my favorite le Carré heroes, or the theme from being any less true than it ever has been.

Publisher's Summary:
A corporate lawyer from the House of Single &Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside for crimes that he does not understand. A children’s entertainer in Devon is hauled to his local bank late at night to explain a monumental influx of cash. A Russian freighter is arrested in the Black Sea....
The logical connection of these events and more is one of the many pleasures of this story of love, deceit, family and the triumph of humanity.

Single & Single are a firm of financial enablers. Among their clients are the Russian capitalists, the Orlov family, out to make quick roubles. Their biggest scheme so far is the sale of "clean caucasoid" blood to the West. Money managers, the House of Single, Tiger Single, the senior show more partner, with his son Oliver, are set to reap a fortune. However events impair the smooth flow of cash, and the Russian partners turn to a new means of profit-making, drugs. As a lawyer in a financial management organisation, Oliver draws the line at drugs. It jeopardizes the future of the firm, and his own. He informs on his father to British government officials in the hope of cutting a deal. It takes four years for the government to act, and then their actions result in Tiger's disappearance. But it seems that Oliver was not the only one to betray Tiger.

This was not an easy story to listen to, although narrated extremely well by Michael Jayston. The event with which the story opens, the death of Albert Wincer, really comes midway in the plot, and from that point on Le Carre feeds the reader tidbits, almost in the style of jigsaw puzzle pieces plucked randomly from the box. Sometimes the bits fit, and at other times we have to mentally set them aside for later use. If this was a held-in-the-hand paper book the reader would have the advantage of flipping backwards and forwards, re-reading bits, but you can't do that with an audio.

One of the things that other reviewers have commented on is the fact that at the end it felt as if Le Carre could not get shut of the reader quickly enough. However I had made up my mind about my rating well before that. Perhaps I would have liked it better if I was "reading" it in another format. I may not have had the continuity problems that I referred to earlier. The story did have redeeming features: interesting characters, and good exploration of the relationships between them. show less