Master of spy novels
John le Carre, the spyturned-novelist whose elegant and intricate narratives defined the Cold War espionage thriller and brought acclaim to a genre critics had once ignored, has died. He was 89,
Le Carre’s literary agency, Curtis Brown, said Sunday that he died in Cornwall, southwest England on Saturday after a short illness. The death was not related to COVID-19.
In such classics as “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and “The Honourable Schoolboy,” Le Carre combined terse, but lyrical prose with the kind of complexity expected in literary fiction. His books grappled with betrayal, moral compromise and the psychological toll of a secret life. In the quiet, watchful spymaster George Smiley, he created one of 20th-century fiction’s iconic characters — a decent man at the heart of a web of deceit.
Born David John Moore Cornwell in Poole, southwest England on Oct. 19, 1931, le Carre worked for Britain’s intelligence service before turning his experience into fiction in works.
Officially a diplomat, he
was in fact a “lowly” operative with the domestic intelligence service MI5 — he’d started as a student at Oxford — and then its overseas counterpart MI6, serving in Germany, then on the Cold War front line, under the cover of second secretary at the British Embassy.
His first three novels were written while he was a spy, and his employers required him to publish under a pseudonym. He remained “le Carre” for his entire career. He said he chose the name — ‘‘square’’ in French — simply because he liked the vaguely mysterious, European sound of it.