The Secret Pilgrim (Random House Large Print) [Großdruck] [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

All this is in the way of setting the scene for the series of reminiscences that make up the meat of THE SECRET PILGRIM. Smiley, who has attained the status of a legend in the service, keeps the students entranced for hours and his comments trigger a life time of memories in Ned, who has been one of the Circus' key players in a forty year career that covered most of the Cold War years.

One of Ned's earliest experiences, in the final phase of his training, was when an older hand kept him from making a career ending faux pas. He misread a situation and believed that a member of a visiting Royal's retinue was an intended assassin. Ned, who was anxious to show off his new found skills was about to jump the "assassin" but was prevented from doing so by the more experienced agent. This was a learning experience that he never forgot.

As the evening progresses we share more of Ned's memories with him. One is when a murder is made to look like a suicide, and false evidence is left that was meant to discredit Ned.

At another time, almost every group of spies that he is "running" are betrayed, and a number of innocent people are thought to be the betrayers. The source of the betrayals remains a mystery until one of the top men in the Circus is found to be the traitor.

We go through many other life threatening, and occasionally humorous, escapades with him. As is frequently the case in Le Carre's novels, the deskbound, high level, decision makers run the gamut, from the rare competent and dedicated individuals, to the more common politically motivated self enhancers who build their own careers with no thought to the jeopardy in which they are putting their field agents.

The evening ends, and we accompany Ned as he passes the final days before his retirement.

With three days left to go, he is given one last assignment. He is charged with convincing a rather unpleasant multi-millionaire to stop providing armaments to various participants in conflicts throughout the world. These armaments are sold through an interlocking chain of corporations which he totally controls. Because of the international complexities of these corporate structures, the armament sales are technically legal. Unhappily for Ned his efforts are rebuffed. It is at this point that he remembers Smiley's old aphorism about the right people losing the Cold War but the wrong people winning it.

If you've never read Le Carre, this book should whet your appetite to go back in time and read his "Smiley" books. If you have read other of his books, I can't think of a better way to wrap them up.

Anyway, this is not a novel, it's a collection of short stories. Very good short stories. Brilliant not only for their intrigue, but simply for their literary quality. You do have to get past a few Le Carre trademarks (a tendency towards glibness, and a seeming inability to create female characters who are more than just surface), but these are less flaws than simply elements of the Le Carre style. You won't notice them as you're reading the stories. You won't notice much of anything else, either; these stories are completely engrossing, the kind that have you up until the wee hours telling yourself "just one more...ok, two more."

The Secret Pilgrim, however, does suffer from focusing on the wrong character, "Ned" instead of George Smiley. It's not a big problem, but at some points during my reading I found myself saying "hold on, let Smiley tell a story!" Who among us wouldn't have preferred a collection of short stories about the Master instead of his Acolyte? A tale or two of Smiley's days in Germany during the War, a Haydon story (or three), a sidelight on what he was doing while working on the Dolphin case (Honourable Schoolboy), and--greatest lack of all!--more information on Karla's debriefing after "Smiley's People." Talk about someone who would have some stories!

I sincerely hope that, before he retires from the writing game, Le Carre revisits some of his characters from the Karla Trilogy. A collection of stories about Smiley, Karla, Haydon, Control, and even young Peter Guilliam would be most welcome. It's not that his newer work is bad, just that it is completely overshadowed by his earlier work.

RstJ