Rating: 4/5
Review:
Er...
I find it hard to write this review because I wasn't really sure what I made of the book overall. In many ways it is excellent: it is well written and readable, often gripping and often both subtle and penetrating in its characters and period setting. However, it is *so* subtle and often digressive that I sometimes had the sense of just catching tiny, faint glimpses of narrative through a thick mist of character and setting which left me feeling rather rudderless and lost.
Peter Cotton is a British intelligence agent in 1947 New York. For the first 120 pages of the book he is recovering in a clinic from having been subjected to mind-altering drugs, and the remainder of the plot is largely his recuperating while trying to determine who did this to him and why. The narrative is elliptical, digressive and slow-paced which in many ways I liked, and I found the long opening in the clinic very gripping even though almost nothing really happens. In fact, the book is an awful lot of nothing really happening much of the time, most of which is fine but which does get a bit wearisome at times - especially as John le Carré's most Delphic characters seem positively forthright by comparison with with many here, so that making sense of what is going on and what is being said or not said is sometimes extremely difficult.
I have given this book four stars because I thought it well written, it was certainly tense in places and it has stayed with me in rather a haunting way, but I wouldn't want to tackle another one in the series for a while. Anyone looking for an action-packed spy thriller with a strong, clearly articulated plot should give this book a wide berth, but if you like a subtle, allusive and occasionally bewildering novel this may well be for you.
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