TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is one of John Le Carré’s most famous novels. Having read all of his George Smiley novels up until that point, I was expecting great things.
I was to be disappointed.
This was not due to the plot. TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is about a Soviet mole in “The Circus” (otherwise known as MI6), who blew up an operation in Czechoslovakia, resulting in the destruction of various British spy rings, the executions of multiple people working for the British, and the injury of senior agent Jim Prideaux, who took two bullets to his shoulder.
This kind of tale can so easily be milked for tension. But that is not what John Le Carré did.
Instead, the novel opens in a boy’s school with the arrival of the new French teacher (Jim Prideaux), an eccentric loner who lives in his caravan. And so the opening of this novel, far from being provocative, is a slow ramble into the lives of the boys at the school.
Admittedly, this book was published in 1974, and the style of writing today is very different from how it was then. But why didn’t Le Carré open with the scene where Jim Prideaux gets shot? Then you could have had a cliff-hanger of an ending, leaving the reader unsure as to whether he is dead or alive, before switching to London and the politics of the circus.
I can see that if you are a former or current spy, this novel would make you chuckle, for Le Carré is very good at delineating office politics. And this volume is famous for its social commentary.
But where is the tension?
I slogged through it only because it is so famous.
Unfortunately for me, it didn’t get any better.
