The Mission Song [Hardcover]

Bruno Salvador, with an Irish Missionary father and Congolese mother, works as a freelance interpreter. As well as English, French and Swahili he also speaks a range of less common African languages.

As a loyal British citizen he is proud to be called on by unnamed government departments to assist in sensitive negotiations. But when he is asked to leave at short notice to attend a conference of unnamed people for unknown purposes on an anonymous northern island things go awry for him. As an interpreter he is expected to hold everything in strict confidence but as the conference progresses he sees and hears things that can only be detrimental to peace and progress.

It is very well done how Le Carré portrays Salvo as initially very enthusiastic and naïvely supportive of what is being planned and how he gradually has his innocence ripped away from him.

The Mission Song is well plotted (complex but believable) and whips along at a great pace. An exciting read but without any crazy chases or gun fights. Another great addition to Le Carré's post-Cold War output.

Can businessmen, Civil Servants and politicians be so corrupt and self-serving? Yes, probably.

In The Mission Song John le Carré re-visits the world of espionage that we associate with his writing. He is a master of the clandestine, the deniable, the re-definable. Bruno Salvador is a freelance linguist. His parentage is complex, his origins confused, but his skills beyond question. By virtue of an upbringing that had many influences, he develops the ability to absorb languages. Having lived in francophone Africa and then England, he is fluent in both English and French plus an encyclopaedia of central African languages. His unique gifts, considerable skills and highly idiosyncratic methods qualify him for occasional assignments as an interpreter. He is trusted. He is also, he discovers, pretty cheap, and already has considerable experience of working for those aspects of government and officialdom which sometimes transgress legality. He is also, therefore, vulnerable. So when a new assignment - so urgent that he has to skip his wife's party - drags him to a secret destination, he initially takes everything very much in his stride.

But Bruno is much more than a linguist, certainly much more than a translator and, as a result of the application of conscience, considerably more than the interpreter his employers have hired. His perception of language is so acute that it provides him with an extra sense, a means of interpreting the world, no less, not just a method of eliciting meaning. But he also has the intellectual skills to identify consequences, to interpret motives. And it is here where he begs to differ with his paymasters.

The Mission Song is the kind of book where revelation of the plot, beyond this mere starting point, would undermine the experience of reading it. Suffice it to say that Bruno's task is both what is seems to be and also not what it seems. Bruno's ambivalence in relation to its aims prompts him to go beyond the call of duty. And, in doing so, he learns more about his near-anonymous employers. But, of course, they learn more about him, a reality that eventually has fairly dire consequences.

The Mission Song is also a love story, or two, one on the way in and one on the way out. It's also about privilege and power, plus their use, misuse and abuse. In many ways it inhabits similar territory to John le Carré's Absolute Friends, but is singularly more successful, especially in the credibility of the eventual denouement.

Fans of John le Carré will need no convincing. For those who have found his work less than satisfying, The Mission Song shows the author at his best, presenting a complex, highly credible plot in a skilful, illuminating, informative and yet entertaining way. Its eventual message about the abuse of power is subtly threaded into the very substance of the plot and makes its point with strength and relevance. We know a little more about the world by the end.

For those who are familiar with Le Carre's books, this novel is in a similar vein to the excellent 'Constant Gardener'. A complex novel, requiring considerable concentration in the earlier sections particularly, it deals with the difficult themes of modern African politics and the often unsavoury involvement of Western powers.

It is narrated in the first person by Bruno Salvador, an intrepreter who becomes unwillingly dragged into a plotted coup in Central Africa involving tribal warloads, shady businessmen, and British secret services. It's a real slow starter, with the first two thirds taken up with the complex top secret negotiations that set up the more climatic ending.

Although it does give some of the DR Congo's complicated history, I found my limited prior knowledge (from having read Tim Butcher's non-fiction 'Blood River') really helped me to follow the plot. Even given that, it's not an easy read and is one you need to focus on, best read in big chunks rather than small snippets.

The principal character of 'Salvo' I found rather irritating at times, and his convoluted backstory a bit unneccessary. And even accepting that this is a thriller - where the limits of plausibility can be stretched further than I'd normally tolerate to make a good story - a couple of things went too far. The hardest to swallow was the affair that Salvo starts with a politically active nurse the night before he is dragged away on his top secret mission. The fact that only the night before he'd been indulging in pillow talk about the very men he was translating for seemed daft, and wasn't even necessary for plot purposes. I also found the whole instant love thing a bit over the top, and his attitude at times stupidly naive.

Despite this, the final part of the book is surprisingly gripping with a couple of good twists and the overall attempt to address these serious and not very palatable issues is a good one. Any book that brings to a wider attention the suffering in Eastern Congo can only be a good thing. I applaud Le Carre for mixing serious political and ethical issues in with his more familiar cloak-n-dagger stuff.

It's not as good as the Constant Gardener - which is in my opinion Le Carre's finest novel yet - but it is certainly original and sets a reasonable balance between the weighty topics and the need for a compelling story. Not perfectly, but certainly a worthy attempt. A must read for anyone interested in African politics.