This is one of the rare books that I started and finished in a single weekend because it was harder to put down than pick up. I don’t even have a ‘first look’ post for this one because it’s too late for that already. Le Carre had me hooked from the second I picked it up. I started reading and before I knew it, it was 3 AM and half the book was gone. It’s a shorter novel at 60,000 words, but that’s not too uncommon for the average thriller. This novel is anything but average however. Even calling it a thriller is a bit of a mislead. It’s a spy novel, no two ways about it. Really it captures the essence of espionage that doesn’t come through in most popular spy media. We have been conditioned by the likes of James Bond, Ethan Hunt (Mission Impossible), and Natasha Romanov (Black Widow) to see spies as action heroes, their movies full of explosions, car chases, running and gunning. ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’ has none of that. There is exactly one fight scene. It lasts less than a page and happens in complete darkness. In fact, most of the book is just people talking to one another, yet it holds more suspense and sheer danger in each of those interviews than all of those movies above combined.

There is no running for Alec Leamas, because his enemies can catch him if they really wanted to. There are no explosions, because blowing someone up won’t solve the problems he’s faced with. He doesn’t carry a gun, because his enemies wouldn’t let him in their house if he did. The only real power in Leamas’ possession is the information inside his head, and the subtlety of his deceptive wiles. The secret of this novel’s powerful suspense is Leamas’ vulnerability. With one last chance to exact revenge on the brutal East German counterintelligence director, Hans-Dieter Mundt, he’ll have to take greatest risks of his entire career, putting himself in a position so precarious that if things go wrong he’ll never find a way out. But for Leamas’ this last chance is one he can’t turn down. Mundt is the agent who stifled his career, routed his entire network, and had his last and best agent shot down before his very eyes. He must have his revenge, but it’ll have to be a subtle affair.

This story is just too good to ruin so I’ll sum up my thoughts about the book here first, but if you want my full thoughts and a summary you can keep reading below the following paragraph (because I can’t figure out how to make a spoiler section that actually functions the way I want, but don’t tell anyone I said that).

I almost regret reading this book first because I have no doubt it’s going to make the Bond novel look incredibly hokey by comparison. Maybe I’m wrong, I hope I’m wrong, but somehow I doubt it. ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’ really is a masterpiece. It changed my perspective on what spy novels are, and how subtle a thriller can be, so much so that I’d like to work some of that into my own writing in the future. This one is going straight into my favorite books list, and due to it’s short length, will probably be one of the few books I reread over the years.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley

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