I finished John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold about an hour ago, and I’m still kinda stunned by it. I’ve always liked spy movies and the like, but I’ve never been much for spy novels. This book changed that.
Spy is really unassuming. At first the short chapters breeze by, but as different, seemingly coincidental events unwind it all of the pieces begin to fall into place. The short chapters make for a fast pace, which suits the style of the novel so perfectly. Espionage is a game played with high stakes and very little information, and we don’t know the final score until the very last page. The short chapters also made this book very readable, and I think it’s much more approachable than another espionage classic, The Day of the Jackal.
I know that this is considered “the” spy book, and I 100% agree. As I said, the it starts out in an unassuming way, but once the different schemes all started to play out, it became clear why le Carré (a pen name by the way) is considered the master. One thing I didn’t expect is that the style reminded me a lot of the Song of Ice and Fire series because it has lots of short chapters that focus on different POV characters. Different viewpoints let the audience know just slightly more than the characters, and gives us a tantalizing whiff of what’s about to happen. Of course, with the amount of deceit, deception, and trickery involved in spycraft, we still don’t know much.
If you love the psychological, strategic, or manipulative side of spy stories, and you somehow haven’t already read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, you’re going to love this book and you should get started now. It’s not James Bond. There are no wild car chases. No explosions happen at any point in the book. It’s a slower, more realistic spy game. It’s a game that’s all about playing people against themselves and always being one move ahead. It’s pretty awesome. And it’s a damn good read.
See the full list of books that I’ve read for this project here.
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