Le Carre’s Smiley is back
In John Le Carre’s first George Smiley novel in 25 years, Peter Guillam, retired British spy, is recalled to London to account for his actions decades earlier. In the light of current politics both international and personal, hard choices made in impossible circumstances are suddenly fair game for survivors and their lawyers petitioning for compensation. With everything transformed by the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it’s the only revenge they can manage.
Guillam had been one of George Smiley’s inner circle during the Cold War, and this books revisits events from earlier novels — the classic Spy Who Came In From The Cold and the later “Smiley Trilogy” of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
But for those of us who have read them, A Legacy of Spies is a welcome return to an earlier and very different era. Le Carre’s lost none of his remarkable ability to turn the material of countless cheap thrillers — secret missions, double agents, runs for the border — into deeply affecting personal histories. And here, events peripheral to the earlier novels become the central plot. Le Carre uses them to contrast an earlier age’s moral priorities against the competing ethical demands of the present. The fallout visited on the children of heroes and villains alike seems much more pressing than outdated political manoeuvres.
Guillam is up against a new generation of intelligence agents who have no loyalty to the organization’s past, and are looking for their own lamb to sacrifice. The irony of this is not lost on Guillam, since the events in question cost the lives of several people close to him.
It’s clear from the start that, despite assurances, he’s not being asked merely to clarify details, but is being interrogated as a scapegoat. It’s not long before he realizes he’s sunk without Smiley and runs for it. But old spies are, well, old. Where once this would have been the preface to a much longer run though a maze of connection and diversion, keeping the reader guessing and surprised at every turn, Le Carre instead goes easy on Guillam and the resolution comes much too easily and much too soon. Michel Basilières teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies.