This is an enjoyable read even if you don't have much interest in the Cold War and how the ice melted in great power relations through perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) in the Russia of President Gorbachev. This is because the book is largely dialogue: a kind of courtroom questioning. Whether Barley, the charming Englishman, is being grilled about his integrity by representatives of American military or exchanging remarks with the beautiful Katya, there is a search for information, and the revelation of character going on through the dialogue all the time. If you think of how you talked to someone you fancied in the intial stages of your relationship you are on the right lines. If you remember how alert you became when you heard him or her mention another name that you thought might be a rival, you will have the basic idea. You want to find out more but not reveal your jealousy.
In Moscow, Leningrad, London or on an island off the coast near Boston in USA, and at a publishing exhibition, a party, in a one-to-one conversation, there is excitement in whether the spy-hunters will pick through to the truth under the plausible. And behind it all is an intriguing love story,
most of the time with the principals still wearing their clothes.
If Le Carré is anywhere near the truth then the sheer scale of the spy business was lavish in use of men and resources. How did those involved motivate themselves for such work? It must have taken a deep belief in their own way of life and the approval of their masters, of course. The aim was to find out just how powerful the perceived enemy was and from there the military had to plan how he might be defeated including the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Don't get discouraged by the main character in the opening chapters. He is not a main character in the rest of the story.
There was a film with Sean Connery as an unlikely Barley. The book is better: eight out of ten.
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