A Small Town in Germany
by John le Carre
Book Summary Information
Author: John le CarreEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2002-03-01
ISBN: 0743431715
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780743431712
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Book Reviews of A Small Town in Germany
Book Review: Not the Book to Begin Reading LeCarre
Summary: 3 Stars
John LeCarre's "A Small Town in Germany,"first published in 1969,is one of the British author's earlier works, and one of his stand alone cold war spy thrillers. He is, of course, one of the greatest authors of spy thrillers, and he's still publishing. His masterworks include The Spy Who Came in from the Cold;Smiley's People; and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He certainly has ample first hand experience of the business, as he was an actual British spy, for five years, under his birth name, David Cornwell. According to internet biographers, he was, in fact, embedded in Soviet territory when he was blown by Kim Philby, most famous post-war British secret service traitor; Philby's treachery might have been fatal to him.
But the book at hand concerns doings in the British Embassy in Bonn, the capital of West Germany at the time, and takes place in the "recent future." Britain faces interlocking problems: it's struggling to get into the Common Market, which Germany can prevent; and a new anti-British demagogue, Karfeld, is arising in Germany to further torment the Brits. At that fraught moment, an Embassy quasi-staffer--Second Secretary Leo Harting, ethnic German-- goes missing, taking along damaging files, a document trolley, somebody's fan, somebody else's tea maker. So an un-Smiley, Alan Turner, is sent from London to search him out. We know Turner is an un-Smiley because he's from the Midlands, meaning he's rude, loses his temper, and dresses badly.
This book makes an extremely long, slow start, although it opens with a brief cameo of where LeCarre intends to go. But if you are not interested -- were never that interested--in internal German politics back then, or in Britain's gaining admission to the Common Market, you will have a very long slog indeed to get to the good part: approximately 300 of approximately 380 pages. Furthermore, this book shares some of the problems of its author's post cold war writing: LeCarre labors to make mountains from molehills, and to interest his readers in the dull. However, his writing is always witty and concise, and he does finally manage to generate some heat in the end: some readers may come to care a bit about Harting and Turner. And finally, LeCarre has always had that knack for bang-up set piece beginnings and endings.
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