The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

A gem of a book and another one that I read again and again. It’s not just the wonderful writing and the moody atmosphere; I love the way that le Carré explores the moral ambiguity in spying during this early part of the Cold War.

I read an interview in which le Carré talked about the pleasure of secrecy and enjoying the feeling that you know something that others don’t. I get that "I’ve got a secret" idea and I’ve used that thought in my own work. Le Carré was also a spy.

The Cold War is the war I was born into. No writer has chronicled the competition between superpowers better than LeCarre.

When Alec Leamas falls for Liz, he’s not aware of the depth of his feelings until she’s murdered as a pawn in the great game between Russia and the West. The revenge he seeks and the resolution he acquires are among LeCarre’s best efforts.

I was riveted to every scene. 

I read this book, soon after it was published in 1963 in the middle of the Cold War. I was young and naïve. It grabbed me then.

This year I picked it up and read it again, a good test of a book’s endurance. It was as vital as ever – a British agent sent across the Iron Curtain, and some brutal, arresting, questioning, and occasionally enlightening things that followed. It became the first of a new and powerful genre, the espionage novel with a flawed spy, moral inconsistencies, deceptions, and an ending that reflected the inconsistencies of the time.… show more.

What can I state about the late author, John Le Carre, that hasn't always been said by others, critics and readers alike.   

All I can say is that when I first read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold years ago, I was riveted from the very first page. My initial reading occurred in the heyday of the James Bond insulting nonsense, and Le Carre's spy novel was a refreshing, truthful telling about some ugly facts about Western spy agencies. My impression after my second reading remains the same.

“But it’s the world, it’s gone mad.” It sums up a spy world in Alec Leamas finds himself turfed from his position by British Intelligence for a string of failures in Soviet-held East Berlin.

Ultimately, he joins East Berlin’s Intelligence only to make one desperate to escape from them. It was a world of agents and double agents with no end in sight.

I like the book for its fast pace and incredible character sketches that made them come alive in their triumphs and failures and memorable long after you finish the book.

Le Carré’s third novel was a huge bestseller and forever influenced anyone setting out to write novels of espionage and suspense.

Me included. I took particular pleasure in Le Carré over the long years, returning continually to an author I started with as a child and continued to read as the two of us aged.

Sometimes he was brilliant (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honorable Schoolboy) and occasionally he was overblown (The Constant Gardener). But no matter what he wrote, I was always his faithful follower.

When he died in 2020 at the age of 89,… show more.

John Le Carré is one of the reasons I became a spy thriller writer. Like Joseph Conrad who wrote great novels that happened to be set at sea, Le Carré writes literary novels set in the world of spies. Spare, authentic, intensely realistic, this book plunges you deep into the duplicitous world of spy tradecraft, reeling you in with a brilliant plot, spot-on characterizations and line after line of dialogue you’ll want to quote. The story depicts Alex Leamas, a burnt-out British agent who defects in a scheme to eliminate a powerful East German spymaster, but what it's really about… show more.

Espionage at the beginning of the cold war was relationship- and intellect-driven. John le Carré (a.k.a. David Cornwell), who worked for both MI5 and MI6, accurately portrayed the environment in which operatives put their lives and sources at risk in service of their country. I find this novel interesting because it is in stark contrast to contemporary spy thrillers that typically include advanced technology and sometimes far-fetched plot twists. 

I always want the characters to grab my attention in a book, as much, if not more, than the story itself. Of course the story must be good, but it’s inside the minds, bodies and actions of the protagonists where I live every day until I reach the end. Then, if they were good I’ll look out for them again. 

In this one it was Alec Leamas and George Smiley. I love whisky, so I associated with Leamas in lots of ways and George Smiley was a person whose morality was something I wanted to portray in my fictional characters.

It’s simply a great and well-crafted story and one that grabbed me well before I knew I wanted to write. British agent Alec Leamas is burned out and believes the Cold War is over for him, but then he’s given a chance at revenge by posing as an East German defector. All the while, Western espionage methods aren’t looking any morally better than the enemy’s, and Leamas feels it. No heroes here, just underdogs and survivors—a revelation at the time. A classic for so many reasons.