You may notice in this review that I'm a little bit of a fan.
What makes his books great are his characters. Characters that live their lives inside their own heads. Always gathering information, always analyzing, always questioning. Questioning the data, the analysis and themselves. They are as far from James Bond as they can be these cerebral, wounded, gray men. In "Our Game" we live inside the head of Timothy Cranmer (good Anglican name but I digress), recently retired agent runner for "The Office" one of England's secret services. But a quiet retirement with an inherited vineyard and a beautiful young mistress isn't in the cards for Cranmer. The double agent that he ran forces his way back into Tim's life by suddenly disappearing. What begins as a routine police investigation eventually sends Cranmer fleeing the police and his former employers accused of helping to steal millions of dollars from the Russian Government. His shared history, dating back to their days in school, with his former agent has made him a suspect in the theft along with the mistress. The story will carry him deep into the bowels of underground resistance to the Russian authorities and the civil unrest in the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus mountains.
This is really classic story telling from le Carré. Cranmer fights his own memories and demons as he carefully assembles the clues he needs. Then the action takes off at a gallop as he tries to figure out who is involved and who is likely to kill him as soon as answer questions. Happy endings are not really the stock in trade for the great spy writer but satisfying endings are. Cranmer will face the final question and make a profound decision about who he is meant to be. The reader can only hang on for the ride. In the end my thought was "What else could he have done?"
If you want a feel for the reality of intelligence work of a certain time and place you won't want to miss this one.
Rating - **** Recommended Read
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