The Honorable Schoolboy
5.0 Stars
1-1-2015

Another bleak LeCarre novel. This book represents something of a transition from his early works. In those books the Western spies might use truly terrible means in a sort of Special Circumstances way, but they were at least fighting against Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, and there is a sense that basically anything would be preferrable to the enemy. In this book it is not at all clear who the enemy is, and the focus is more on internal corruption, greed, and self-serving, and the human cost paid by individuals caught up in these struggles. In some ways it reminds me of the Wire, and in general the characters who get caught up by the intelligence services fare about as well those drawn into the criminal justice system in the Wire.