The magnificent new John le Carré novel, A Delicate Truth, is truly a feast of vintage le Carré. Fifty years after a young Foreign Office official, David Cornwell, became John le Carré, he has returned to his old stamping ground – only to dissect it with a quiet fury.
A counter terrorism operation is mounted in Gibraltar – it is so secret that only a handful of people are even allowed to know about it. The minister's private secretary, Toby Bell, is not one of them. Three years later one of the soldiers involved tries to reveal the horror of the op, and the excessive lengths to which Whitehall is prepared to go to cover it up. The soldier approaches the quintessentially English, slightly befuddled Foreign Office retiree Sir Kit Probyn (involved, in a bemused way, in the original operation) to open his eyes to the reality of the cover up, and its disastrous consequences. Sir Kit contacts Toby Bell – a young, upcoming diplomat, surely destined for higher things who, through snippets of conversation he really should not have heard, suspects that there are deeper forces at work, and tries, increasingly desperately to get to the truth. His attempts to track down his shadowy, opaque former svengali come to nothing, and as he realises the extent to which 'they' will go to keep him quiet, his determination to reveal what he knows increases.
The quiet confidence of le Carré's writing is such that you feel, not as if you are reading a book, but are being given a vicarious glimpse into a world you know nothing about and, fairly quickly, are glad you have nothing to do with. Le Carré gets right to the heart of modern tradecraft in a frightening way, and his language is precise and impeccable, with a humour that surprises and adds to the nervous tension. As we leave diplomacy behind, and the awful reality of what really lies beneath it is gradually revealed, the pace becomes increasingly frantic - though le Carré never has anything other than an iron grip on the plot, and the dark and quiet message underneath it. It feels very much as if the War on Terror is the first thing that le Carré has had to really get his teeth in to – to take apart – since the end of the Cold War – and his ire at the bland-faced Whitehall bureaucracy that masks an appalling lack of conscience is not lessened by his maturity.
This is very much a successor to le Carré's early spy work - and a deeply compelling read. One feels almost personally involved in Toby's struggle with his own conscience and background, and the delicate balance between his career and the need to do the right thing. There are those who will want, à la the subject matter of the book, to read too much into its symbolism, and what it says about le Carré – but I prefer to see it for what it is: a bloody good read – written by a master storyteller who also happens to be an expert on the subject. This book will stay with you long after the cover is closed.
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Megan Hitchin has worked at the Book Lounge since it opened in 2007, and as well as being a voracious reader, wrote and designed the website. She has worked in the book trade in both the UK and South Africa, and loves fiction of most genres. Few things beat a really intelligent, well written thriller but Megan will happily dig in to history, politics and science too.