Our Game by John le CarréMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
John le Carré's England in "Our Game" is that familiar land that is governed a bit like a giant public school, from whence the upper echelons of the Whitehall civil service and especially the secret service are usually drawn. Former Treasury official and secret spymaster named Timothy Cranmer, has retired to his 17th-century mansion in southwest England after being pensioned off at the end of the cold war. Cranmer is from public school and can recognise a '55 Cheval Blanc when he tastes it (I might get as far as recognising a claret…). He has also found himself a sexy young mistress, Emma, of the right type: boarding school, musical education in Vienna, rich friends in Paris -- even though she has played the field a bit before arriving in Cranmer's drawing room. Cranmer is visited late one Sunday night by two of the most improbable policemen I have ever encountered. They insolently inform this mandarin that a friend of his, Larry Pettifer, has disappeared, under suspicious circumstances, from his lodgings in a provincial university town, and want to know if Cranmer has seen him lately. Pettifer is Cranmer’s former double agent - dreamer, dissolute, philanderer and disloyal friend - and he has vanished along with Tim’s mistress. The trail will take Cranmer to the lawless wilds of Russia and the North Caucasus…
Our Game contains all the authentic background of post Cold War Europe and espionage that is far removed from the world of James Bond. Le Carré was a former intelligence officer and, for me, is the the great master of the spy story. I enjoyed it.
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