A Most Wanted Man - Dark Publications

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Product Description
New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carre's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man.

A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.

Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career -- or safety. In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Freres, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.

Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance -- and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the "War on Terror," the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents.

Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.

Customer Reviews: Read 117 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." September 18, 2008
55 out of 67 found this review helpful

George Orwell.

With the possible exception of one young German lawyer there are no revolutionary acts in John Le Carre's "A Most Wanted Man". Rather, we have high-level functionaries from German, British, and US intelligence agencies for whom deceit is the norm and truth plays, at best, a secondary role in acting in what is or may be in each country's national interest. In tone and substance this is not much different from Le Carre's Cold War fiction. The trick is to see whether the same cynical realism plays as well in today's `war on terror'. Le Carre's transition from the Cold War to the brave new world post-9/11 is excellent. The result is a book that is dark, cynical, and almost as rewarding as the best of Le Carre's earlier fiction.

The most wanted man in question is Issa. Issa is the product of the rape of a Chechnyan woman by a Red Army Colonel stationed in Chechnya. Raised by his father in Russia, Issa flees to the west after his father dies. Issa finds his way to Hamburg and despite his famished look it appears that Issa has connection to money and influence. He is also, apparently, a Muslim and because of his Chechnyan heritage he is identified by Russian intelligence agencies as a suspected terrorist. German, US, and British intelligence agencies based in Hamburg quickly identify him as a person of interest. The other main protagonists are Annabel Richter and Tommy Brue. Richter is a newly qualified attorney who has foregone work in private practice to work for a German civil rights organization created to assist immigrants and refugees in normalizing their status in Germany. Brue is a private banker whose bank is the depository of the significant funds Issa may lay claim to.

Le Carre does a wonderful job portraying Issa, Richter, and Brue. Issa is a total cipher. He has a naive innocence about him (think of Chance from Jerzy Kosinki's Being There) that takes the reader in one direction in assessing his motives and the real reason for his presence in Germany. Yet there are enough anomalies and discrepancies in his story and in his remarks to Richter and Brue that make you go, "hold on a moment, there's more here than meets the eye." Richter is something of a naif, her idealism tends to obscure her ability to cast a truly critical eye over the gaps in Issa's story.

Tennyson once wrote:

"That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight."

Le Carre writes with exquisite precision and insight about a world in which truth is not a matter worth fighting for. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

3 out of 5 stars

Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another? September 14, 2008
39 out of 52 found this review helpful

This is the first time I've written a book review where someone gave it to me on the condition I write about it. I'm a bit flattered, but can I be fair?

The good people of Amazon asked me if I wanted to be in this Vine program. I said sure. They asked me to choose a book, and I chose this one. Next thing I knew, there was a smiley Amazon package at my door with the book inside, a note from the author printed on the dust cover addressed "Dear Reader".

You can choose more exciting authors than John le Carre, but there's no one better today I know of at the craft of writing, his way with presenting the inner monologues of different characters as they try to sniff each other out, or the ability to describe commonplace sights with a keenness for depth and mood that is almost crushing.

"The building was not a sanctuary, it was not international," he writes of an Amnesty International-like establishment in Germany. "It was a guilty, down-at-heel accomplice of Nazi times, squeezed onto the corner of a traffic junction and walled in by garish cigarette hoardings. The graffiti on its weeping walls offered tropical sunsets and obscenities."

You never visit this building a second time, but in le Carre's hands you don't need to. He's squeezed all the juice he can from it here, and a piece of it will stay with you for the rest of the read.

That's the great thing about le Carre, but there's a concomitant problem: Narrative morbidity. He doesn't write spy stories with guns, that's understood. But there's a static quality to the long talking-heads passages that make up the bulk of the storyline.

The story presents us with the title character, Issa, a Chechen on the run from the law in Hamburg for reasons that aren't immediately clear. He enlists the help of a beautiful human-rights lawyer and an aging banker who sees in the lawyer a sexy chance to do the right thing. Who is Issa, and can he be saved from the dark forces that want to make him their latest pointless casualty in the War on Terror?

The philosophy, not the mystery, is what intrigues and drives le Carre's storytelling here. Most of the way through, he makes it very worthwhile, his seasoned powers showing no signs of flagging. Sure, "A Most Wanted Man" revisits the familar ground of spy-turning and agency turf wars seen in "A Russia House", and there's a whiff of "Simple & Simple" in the battered old bank that one of the main characters administers. But he finds new and better ways of teasing out ideas. His May-December romance here is just as predicable as it was in "Russia House", but better handled.

The main, crushing problem with the book is how much the philosophy takes over and strangles a gripping mystery. The mystery of Issa is never fully explained. Instead of a denouement worthy of all the ideas he juggles, we get a sudden, sharp ending that makes sure we all know where le Carre stands on the political question of the day. Frankly, I was less interested in that then I was in the story of Issa and the other characters, and I felt a bit cheated. Okay, Americans can be terrible people, but is that all he wanted to leave us with?

4 out of 5 stars

Ninety-Five Percent Good September 5, 2008
28 out of 33 found this review helpful

John le Carre bases A Most Wanted Man on a most unlikely premise. To depict the extent of Western xenophobia and scapegoating spawned by 9/11, he chooses to set this spy novel not in the country that was struck by the terrorists, or in the nations targeted by the ensuing War on Terror, but in the country that served as a way station for several key 9/11 terrorists.

Hamburg, Germany, a city known for its openness to foreigners, is infiltrated by a fractured young man from Chechnya who may (or may not) pose the next grave threat to Western civilization. Young Issa's improbable entry into Germany, tenuous connection to Islamic radicals, and inherited right to a large secret bank account held by British-owned Brue Freres, place him in the crosshairs of German, British and United States intelligence agencies, each with its own mysterious agenda. When young civil rights attorney Annabel petitions bank owner Tommy Brue to release the secret funds and help protect Issa from deportation, Annabel and Tommy find themselves caught up in a multi-layered plot that tests their willingness to sacrifice their reputations and livelihoods for the benefit of this enigmatic young man.

A Most Wanted Man succeeds not only as a sophisticated spy thriller, but also as a nuanced character study, provocative political commentary, and thoughtful examination of what it really means to be a moral human being. The writing is fluid throughout, and the well-constructed plot builds suspense even in the absence of violent action. The ending, though, left me with the impression that le Carre wound this tale so tightly that it jammed up at the climax and could not release properly. When this gets made into a movie, as seems to be the case with most of le Carre's books, the screen writer's challenge will be to devise a more fitting resolution to this fantastic build-up.

3 out of 5 stars

Le Carre Has Lost His Touch October 17, 2008
26 out of 33 found this review helpful

I can't begin this review without saying that I have long considered John Le Carre my favorite write. I've read all his books - most of them several time - and have felt proud to proclaim myself his greatest fan. All of which makes writing my review for "A Most Wanted Man" both difficult and painful.

The book is a love letter to the Muslim community, sickeningly considerate of their views, while cursorily dismissive of "the West" (Britain, Germany, and the big bad wolf, America) and its legitimate security concerns. The writing is fantastic - when isn't it? the man is a literary genius!! - but at the same time, disgustingly contrived. Worst of all, he commits the cardinal sin: the story is a bore.

For a while now, Le Carre has moved away from a gimlet-eyed recounting of espionage's moral castaways and chosen to mount the soapbox of political indignation. If Jerry Westerby and Alec Leamas and Jonathan Pine were punished for their last minute conversions to decency, at least Le Carre offered an even handed view of the stakes involved and drew complex, engaging portrait of all combatants. I, for one, usually agreed with Smiley's plans - even if they went awry. Maybe I'm just a believer in old fashioned REAL POLITIK, but one man's life is often worth the achievement or advancement of a country's security objectives.

(Am I wrong or was it not worth Leamas' life to get the German double agent Mundt into Directorate of East German Intelligence? And by the way, Leamas killed himself by choosing to go back for the girl, as did Jerry Westerby by trying to save the villain Ko. So much for the past....onto A Most Wanted Man.)

First, there is the silly, shoestring of a story. A downcast Muslim immigrant steals into Hamburg hoping to secure money left for him in a private bank by his (villainous)father, a Russian colonel named Karpov. The money is to be used to fund his medical education. The Muslim's name is Issa - or "Jesus," - but he is the most unsympathetic, boorish savior that ever was. Issa attracts the attention of another cardboard character, the untiring do-gooder, Annabelle Richter. Just thinking of her heartfelt paeans to justice in this book makes me want to vomit. If there really are advocates like her in this world, I've never met one...and I pray I never do. Nothing matters to her but the poor wretches she has devoted her life to save. She only drinks water and dresses like a man. Cue: swelling violins. Cut to her flared nostrils as she fights the good fight.

Then there is Tommy Brue, a character Le Carre has written so many times he feels as shopworn as a Salvation Army overcoat. Brue is a fourth generation banker living on the vestiges of his family's succcess while lamenting the business practices which made all of them wealthy. He is another vile, phony creation. In Le Carre's world, the noble must be failures, drunks, tormented homosexuals,discarded sons, or all of the above. In "MWM," Brue is disgusted by his late father's coddling of certain Russian criminals - mostly former KGB types who made off with their country's patrimony in the murky final days of the Evil Empire - and is anxious to right his Daddy's wrongs. (Boy, it's tough to be sixty, handsome, healthy and wealthy. You've got to do something with your life!! Spare me!)

In walks Issa and his problems are solved. Here's MY problem: I didn't buy this for a second. In a tortuously long scene, Brue interrogates Issa and decides to come to his aid. Brue is literally overcome by the muslim community's nobility, their "grace under poverty." A more saintly bunch you've never seen. It is as if Le Carre has smoked some kind of "love opium" that makes him see every Muslim under the sun through rose colored glasses. Worse, Brue's motives seem as much to get into Annabelle Richter's pants as to help the poor Muslim. Make up your mind, Mr. Le Carre. Which is it? Sex or salvation?

Anyway, there is also German intelligence involved - they see Issa as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Time to put him on the unscheduled flight to the secret detention facilities in Romania...you get the drift.

Where will our moral crusaders end up? Take a guess. In Le Carre's world, the noble always fail and the greedy Western capitalists succeed. He has lost all nuance, all shading. It is one long, painful rant. Reading this book, I felt like I were at Marble Arch, listening to some loud mouthed, pretentious jerk lecture me for hours on end. ZZZZzzzzz!!!

John Le Carre has lost his touch. (Sorry, David!)

1 out of 5 stars

Politics Getting in the Way of Fiction October 19, 2008
26 out of 33 found this review helpful

John Le Carre has never disguised his dislike for much that is American, and that fact alone has never stopped me from buying and reading everything he has written to date. I consider the Karla trilogy the best writing ever done in the espionage genre. In fact, it transcends the genre, and "Tinker, Tailor" in particular can be ranked among the best novels of the 20th century, period.

That said, as a long-time, loyal Le Carre reader, I have been growing increasingly troubled over his last several novels that his growing disdain for the United States has clouded his ability to produce good fiction. "Absolute Friends" was a major disappointment precisely because Le Carre couldn't choose between writing a novel that worked or an anti-American screed; the book was somewhere in between, and it functioned effectively on neither level.

I thought he had worked through that issue when he released "Mission Song," which was a return to his usual, high standards.

He has regressed - and then some - in "A Most Wanted Man." If writing mistakes can be tragic, this episode in a great writer's career is a tragedy. The tragic element is that he was well on his way to an artistic success but chose to throw it away with a denouement that serves his politics poorly, his art not at all. Over the first fourteen chapters he creates some very clever, effective, interesting characters; his plotting is excellent; the sense of place and color as good as it gets in modern fiction; the dialog borders on brilliant. Then the resolution: unconvincing, contrived, two-dimensional, and dishonest. A reader has every right to feel cheated.

That Le Carre has strong political views we know, understand, and accept. His views aren't the issue. The issue is that his compulsion to serve his politics in his fiction cheats the fiction.

There are a number of highly regarded opinion journals that would love to publish a 500-word essay by Le Carre on all that he sees as wrong with American politics and policy. Five hundred words would cover about everything he has to say on that subject in novels like this and "Absolute Friends." Perhaps, were he to vent his politics through such essays, he would then be able to return with a clearer eye to the writing of fiction. Le Carre has a lot of admirers who would dearly love to see the fiction he is still capable of writing.

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