The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John Le Carre (1964)
This story is set during the cold war, shortly after the completion of the Berlin wall. Alec Leamas, station head of the West Berlin office of Circus (The British Secret Intelligence Service), loses his best agent at the commencement of the novel. He returns to London in disgrace, where Control (head of Circus), asks him to go back in the cold for one last mission. He will pretend to defect to the East German Communists, and drop hints which will cause them to suspect their best man, Mundt, of being a double agent. The hope is that the communists will be tricked in to destroying their own best asset – Mundt is a ruthless jew-hating leader, already despised by his second-in-command, Fiedler. With the promise of a large reward – enough to retire comfortably on – Alec assumes his new role.
Widely considered one of the best spy novels of all time (and recently receiving new attention as its made into a movie), I was eager to dive into this book. While I liked the clean writing style (which actually reminded me a bit of Hemingway), I was quickly lost about what was happening, and had to turn to wikipedia. Armed with some overview, and a little more background knowledge on the cold war, I returned to the book and found the plot much more exciting. Double agents, secret codes and the harsh-realities of the life of a spy – this is the real deal, this is to the spy novel genre what Treasure Island is to pirates. With its quick pace, the relatively short novel was a fast read, but an essential piece of classic literature.
