A Most Wanted Man [Paperback]

Unbelievable to think it now, but the feeling a few years ago was that Le Carre and his fellow spy writers would struggle for storylines with the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. But the numerous civil wars around the world, particularly in Africa and Asia, and the west's War on Terror have proven a most fertile ground for new plots.

All the action in `A Most Wanted Man' takes place in Hamburg, where an emaciated, illegal Chechen muslim immigrant, Issa Karpov, persuades a Turkish mother and son to take him in after following the son around for a few days.

Issa bears all the signs of having recently been tortured and he's a wanted man both in Sweden (from where he was smuggled in) and his homeland. Helped by human rights lawyer Annabel Richter, and Tommy Brue, a Scottish private banker who operates in the city, he apparently wishes only to qualify as a doctor to help those back home. He appears to be the son of a deceased Russian gangster, who opened an illegal account (a `Lipizzaner' - like the horse) with Tommy Brue's father back in Vienna before the bank relocated. And now Issa wishes to use that 'bad' money (some $12.5m) for the greater good. The German, British and American secret services are aware of him and in turn, wish to use HIM as bait to capture a bigger prize...

The plot is as complex as we've come to expect from the grand old man, and the humour just as sly and knowing. The motives of the leading players are deliberately hidden and almost right up until the very last page we're clueless as to how it will all end up.

He's great at portraying the duplicity, triplicity and even quadriplicity (I almost certainly made at least one of these words up!) in the spy world, and how no one can be taken at face value. Here the German, British and American spooks seem to reach an uneasy agreement on how to best exploit the position, but they're all still fighting their own corner and have very differing motives.

Let's talk about the prose quality: no other espionage writer comes close to matching the style, wit and erudition of Le Carre. He's 77 years old this year, but still very much the master craftsman, creating a mood or conjuring up a location with just a few carefully chosen words.

Stella Rimmington, ex-MI5 chief-turned novelist recently had a go at this new Le Carre novel in the Daily Mail, praising his 'readability' and writing style (she could hardly do anything else) but giving him only four out of ten for realism. Well nuts to you Ms Rimmington, I'm not particularly bothered if the old boy's grasp of modern secret service protocol and/or operating methods are a bit outmoded. This is how I want my Le Carre to be - old school - and proud of it - but still with a finger on the pulse of modern issues. I've never read any of your novels but I suspect you won't be praised and still read in fifty years time like this guy.

It's not `The Spy Who Came in From the Cold', but it is still great entertainment. Few fans will be disappointed with this. David John Cornwell, we salute you!

I was extremely disappointed with this novel. Considering the critical acclaim it received, I was expecting to find le Carre on top form. I know quotes on the front of books are selective, but the praise for 'A Most Wanted Man' was unstinting. All I can say is that the press reviewers must have been treated to the alternate ending. This book has possibly the worst conclusion to any book, ever.

The story is interesting enough. A young immigrant arrives in Germany, claiming to be the heir to a fortune that is secreted in an ailing British bank. The money is blood-money from a Soviet General, but his son Issa, raised as a Chechen, wants only to become a doctor. The rest of the money he wants to give away, to help Muslims across the world. His route to Germany is bordering on the miraculous, a fact that raises alarm bells with a number of Intelligence Agencies. Convinced that Issa is a terrorist, they attempt to entrap him using the owner of the bank, and the solicitor who is supposed to be obtaining him asylum.

The novel poses a few interesting questions about the difficulty of obtaining asylum for persecuted Muslims, and the rather heavy-handed approach of agencies that have too high an opinion of their own superiority, but even this is a bit flabby. After the initial chapters little excitement is generated, and the novel limps towards its conclusion, before being derailed several pages from the end.

I guess some would say the ending is an accurate reflection of the balance of power in the modern world, but to me it was a crass over-simplification - a cheap shot to please liberal readers. There was only the barest suggestion the twist was coming. It was an unsatisfactory use of external forces to resolve the story in an unexpected fashion. Compared with the quality, balance and authenticity of The Constant Gardener, 'A Most Wanted Man' is a pale imitation.

Despite the fact that he made his reputation writing about the duels between NATO intelligence agencies and their Soviet counterparts, no-one could accuse John Le Carré of failing to adapt to the end of the Cold War: with books like The Constant Gardener, Single & Single and The Mission Song (Bookgeeks review), he has explored international money laundering, the Russian mafia, corrupt pharmaceutical research in Africa and foreign involvement in the interminable civil wars of the Congo. Now, with A Most Wanted Man, we have his first true post-9/11 novel, an examination of the differing responses of Western intelligence agencies to the threats posted by Islamist terrorism.

The setting is Hamburg, present day. The lives of a Turkish family, Melik and his mother Leyla, are interrupted by the arrival of Issa, a scrawny refugee, on the run from the Swedish authorities and bearing the scars of torture from incarceration in a Turkish prison. Issa claims to be a devout Muslim, fleeing from the fighting in Chechnya, but parts of his story don't stack up: he doesn't speak the Chechynyan language, and aspects of his religious practice are distinctly awry. Troubled by the presence of this mysterious waif, Melik and Leyla contact asylum specialists Sanctuary North, and get Issa a lawyer to try and regularise his immigration status. Issa explains to his lawyer, Annabel Richter, that he carries in a pouch round his neck the means to access a bank account at the private bank of Brue Freres plc, which will enable him to pursue his dream of studying to be a doctor. Thus we meet Tommy Brue, last of his line, a banker to the wealthy and powerful, saddled with his father's legacy in more ways than one.

Brue's private bank is the holder of a special type of account: the Lipizzaner, so called because like the famous horses, the money starts out black and turns white with age. These accounts were instituted by his father, Edward Amadeus Brue, as a means for corrupt Soviet officials to move money out from behind the Iron Curtain during the collapse of Communism and launder it, and Brue's not particularly fond of their existence - so it's with mixed feelings that he greets the news that a claimant to the last account in existence has turned up. Perhaps given the state of his marriage, he's fascinated by the upright, proper Annabel Richter, and agrees to meet with Issa to establish his credentials as the claimant to a fabulously large sum of money.

Of course, the German intelligence services have been watching the comings and goings around Issa with a great deal of interest - they don't know what to make of him, and consider him likely to a Jihadi. When Issa is drawn to the attention of Gunther Bachmann, an experienced field operative and agent runner, he perceives the beginning of an opportunity to do something that Western spooks have conspicuously failed to achieve: recruit and run an agent or agents inside the Islamist terror networks that represented a substantial threat worldwide. Bachmann steers approval of his plan through the factionalised German secret intelligence apparatus, and soon Annabel Richter is presented with the stark reality that she has no choice but to co-operate with them in using Issa to reach the target of the operation, a Muslim cleric believed to be involved in funding terror through charities. Meanwhile, Tommy Brue has been visited by British intelligence, and he too is co-opted. From this point forwards, Issa, Annabel and Tommy are unwitting and unwilling participants in the machinations of the German, British and American intelligence agencies.

Le Carré imbues his characters with plenty of depth, and the unspoken love triangle that is forming between the three central characters lends added poignancy to the events that follow; for despite the apparent success of the climactic operation, the Americans intervene in a style that is more Jack Bauer than George Smiley, undermining the assurances given to the parties involved. It's not difficult to read this book as a parable for how the intelligence community, through a comprehensive failure of empathy, an unwilligness or inability to run agent networks, and a heavyhanded if nor downright inhuman approach to information gathering, has proved itself unworthy to meet the threat posed by Islamic terrorism. But that doesn't change the fact that it's also an affecting and wonderfully crafted story about human relationships under strained circumstances. It's proof, though none should be needed, that John Le Carré has transcended the confines of the spy thriller to become one of our best, and most successful, novelists.