Agent Running in the Field: A Novel

John le Carré

Oct 2019 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

“[Le Carré’s] novels are so brilliant because they’re emotionally and psychologically absolutely true, but of course they’re novels.” —New York Times Book Review

A thrilling tale for our times from the undisputed master of the spy genre
 
Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.

Nat is not only a spy, he is a passionate badminton player. His regular Monday evening opponent is half his age: the introspective and solitary Ed. Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Prue, Florence and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all. Agent Running in the Field is a chilling portrait of our time, now heartbreaking, now darkly humorous, told to us with unflagging tension by the greatest chronicler of our age.

Ratings and reviews

John le Carré is among the most famous and most prolific author of the spy thriller genre and this is his latest, published in 2019, just a few days after his 88th birthday. That, in itself, it impressive. And that he was still able to write such a captivating story is even more so. But, le Carré fans should take note. This one is quite different than before. He became famous for his Cold War spy novels. With the end of the Cold War, espionage took a different turn and le Carré showed his ability to adapt to the changing times. In this novel, he does so even further but this one seems to focus more on the dysfunction of the West, with special focus on the follies of Britain and Brexit and a significant amount of contempt for Trump on top. The enemy is still the enemy, it’s just that le Carré seems to be portraying Russia as no longer even trying to put on a good front, but one who flaunts its corruption before all. And now Britain and the US are still in conflict with Russia, but more than ever before, the moral ground is fading as the primary dogma revolves around money. After a brief post-Cold War thaw, they are again the same enemies, but willing to sell prime real estate in London and New York to Russian oligarchs and look the other way as Russia spreads fake news and other interference in their countries. John le Carré is obviously not pleased with how things are going at home and this novel shows it. Nat is a British spy who, at 47, seems to have outlived his usefulness to his country. He is returning, after decades of service abroad, to a Britain that almost seems foreign. He no longer fits in with the new politic of his agency and has too much integrity to adapt to new realities. He is offered the chance to take over a “substation” near London that runs some non-producing Russian spies. It seems like an offer designed to push him to retire but, on a whim, he decides to take it and see if he can cultivate one or two of them to become useful. About the same time, he meets Ed, a young man who challenges him to a badminton match which becomes very regular. Ed is ethical to the extreme and obsessed with the decline of the Western world which he believes is being led toward chaos by Brexit and neo-fascism by Trump. Nat simply listens because he enjoys the badminton competition and feels that the young man needs a father figure to listen to him. Le Carré weaves the narrative of Nat’s takeover of the substation, his conflict with superiors, his meetings with Ed, and tensions within his family along with some tense moments that threaten to destroy everything (that every spy novel must have) very skillfully into a story that, at least for the 2nd half of the book, becomes hard to put down. I did find the ending to be a bit abrupt and hard to believe, but it was still a good story and it certainly fits with our times. Unfortunately, this is his last book as he passed away just a year after it was published.

Not Le Carre's best, but entertaining. He never writes "to a formula ", as so many authors do, so you get something different each time, with the same intelligent writing as always.

John LeCarré (RIP) never fails to grab me with his deeply drawn characters and slow-burn plotting. Nat, the protagonist of this book, is cut from much the same cloth as George Smiley, which was an additional pleasure.

About the author

John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a con man, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on December 12, 2020.