Rating: 4/5
Review:
Not one of le Carré's best
John le Carré doesn’t write bad books, but I don’t think this is
one of his best.
A Delicate Truth is
le Carré’s take on Extraordinary Rendition and the increasing
involvement of private contractors in national security in the late
days of the New Labour government in 2008. It deals with an
operation in Gibraltar to exfiltrate a terror suspect which, it
emerges later, has gone badly wrong. Much of the book is concerned
with the activities and fate of two Foreign Office officials who try
to act as whistle-blowers.
It’s a decent
story and the last sections are quite tense and exciting, but as a
book it’s not in the same league as the great Smiley novels, for
example, or the recent, excellent A Legacy Of Spies. Part of the
problem, I think, is that le Carré is plainly (and rightly) outraged
by what he describes and his indignation affects his style. The
calm, measured tone which gives the great novels such impact is
replaced by a more frenetic feel, including the modern fad for a
fractured timescale. Both these things diminished the book for me.
This is still well
worth reading, but my recommendation does come with reservations.
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