The author's note at the beginning of this, John Le Carré says that he wanted to do something more real about the spy experience, after Spy Who Came In From the Cold, his first book (and still very bleak, so that's telling!), and that this was the result and people hated it. I can see if you're expecting sexy spycraft, and Smiley outsmarting the best of them (and there is a delight in that!), you'd absolutely be disappointed, because this is a book that is all about the futility of it all. It's men who had their glory days in WWII, desperately trying to regain some semblance of that greatness, and the lengths they'll go to and people they will sacrifice to make it happen. So know that going in, and it's a very sad tale, but a real and honest one. Also Le Carré talks about one of the "loves" in the book is John Avery's love of his estranged wife, and like sir, politely, sir, he repeatedly talks of his love for Fred Leiser, and there is very much a queer undercurrent that is interesting to note.

Tale of the Cold War and inter-agency rivalry. Started great but the middle bogged down a bit. Always a treat to listen to Frank Muller narrate.

The Looking Glass War was published shortly after perhaps Le Carre's most famous work [b:The Spy Who Came In from the Cold|19494|The Spy Who Came In from the Cold|John le Carré|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327719782s/19494.jpg|1177001] and is every bit as murky, grim and depressing as the aforementioned (possibly even more so).

The book starts brilliantly in a Finish airport where a British agent (Taylor) anticaptes the arrival of a pilot who, having undertaken a risky flyover, should have some vital information in his possession. From the moment the uneasily dialogue with the aiport barman begins you know this agents fate hangs in balance. And so sets forth a chain of events that culminates with four over-the-hill civil servants huddled together in a North German farmhouse hoping to recapture their WW2 glory days.

No characters come out well in this tale. Using one as an example: Avery, Leclerc's personal assistant, is a hopelessly naive fish out of water and is left aghast when he's tasked with returning to Finland to piece together Taylor's demise. His section reads almost like a horror film when he's holed up in the airport hotel jumping out of his skin over the smallest of knocks at the door. Spare a thought though for poor, poor Leiser; our main character in the second act. The moment the department tracks down the Anglicized Pole, who once was a British agent in WW2, for a risky cross border operation into East Germany you know he's doomed. Like the department itself he jumps at the chance to recreate his war hero image even if its only shared by the misfits in British intelligence. Quite how Leiser trusts and adores the monstrously aloof Haldane so much is particularly puzzling to me. But there comes the crux of the matter. The elite have found their willing pleb to do their grubby work for them and if he fails so what? Who will miss a Pole working in a petrol station?

Its scenarios like these that can make Le Carre particulary hard going at times; which is why he has to often rely on his most renowned creation George Smiley who seems to be the only character that possesses a moral compass.

The Looking Glass War is undoubtedly one of Le Carre's finest amongst his illustrious array of works. Highly recommended.

I read this not long after The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, eager to continue the series after that book’s gripping and chilly examination of morality, betrayal and loneliness. The Looking-Glass War touches on similar ideas in an even more bleak and merciless story.

My interest flagged slightly as it became clear that, unlike Alec Leamas, none of the characters comes close to seeming like a protagonist. This is a deeply cynical story, with many fools, no heroes, and no redemption. I found the main characters a little flimsy at times, and the middle dragged a bit as the story sets up.

Nevertheless, it is a concise and scornful portrayal of a morally bankrupt bureaucracy that can scarcely decide what it wants. The pace picks up satisfyingly in the very tense climax.

Like any Le Carre book this novel has some slow stretches featuring lots of British posturing and in depth descriptions of wireless radios from the forties but it is still highly recommended. People grasping for glory, spy agencies secretly trying to sabotage and cut out one another and just a dash of homoeroticism keep this on par with Le Carre's other great output.

The slow build of his novels are magic.

John le Carré's George Smiley series was written in response to Ian Flemming's James Bond. While Bond was all about larger than life villians, cool gadgets and seducing women, le Carré's novels were a more gritty, realistic, and bleak look at the life of a spy.

The previous entry in the series, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, is often named as the greatest spy novel of all time. Following its publication however,the author felt it wasn't quite bleak enough, and this novel is the end result.

The story deals with a small and increasingly irrelevant UK agency known only as The Department trying to resume proper spywork to boost their own standing. The book is filled with ineptitude, risky decisions and a lack of cooperation with MI6 (or the Circus as it's known in these novels). I enjoyed this book much more once I realised it was a satire of sorts.

I’ve never read anything by Ian Fleming and have only examined exurbs of Arthur Conan Doyle. Though I love how both authors’ works have been translated to television and film, I can’t yet bring myself to read arguably the two best thriller authors in the world. I know I’ll dive in once I do, but commitment is holding me back. It’s shameful, I know. So when picking up another round of books from the little free libraries around my home, le Carre’s The Looking Glass War looked unpresumptuous, appearing as a standalone thriller with bright yellowed pages in a sea of romance paperbacks. I’ve never been exposed to le Carre before, so I didn’t know this was one of many books in a series (Why do covers never have the book’s place within a series anymore?). Perhaps consequently, I could not form connections with any of the characters, but I think the author intended to withhold information from readers, to keep his pages turning, and his readers guessing.

In The Looking Glass War, an intelligence agency of unknown history or location, nicknamed the Department, takes on one last case. All but one of its constituents are nearing retirement, and so this will be their final moment in the sun and young 30-something Avery’s rise to the occasion. They unearth details of a supposed transfer of Soviet nuclear missiles to Germany. Thus begins the plotting and planning, a game within a much larger game of nuclear war. Divided into sections, each catalog in gruesome detail the run of Taylor, a courier whose death moves the plot forward, Avery, and Leiser, a Polish fellow who once coded in the war and now the Department’s infiltrator. The plot is arguably exciting enough, a hodgepodge story of learning the ways of spy life, as Leiser befriends Avery, shoots/fights/codes/kills/retreats, and ultimately takes (and fails) his mission. Though the budding relationship between Leiser and Avery is compelling, as they represent old and new, every other character is stereotypical. Worse, the women play wife or secretary and no other role whatsoever. Le Carre’s bitter writing suggests the agency thinks their workers are composed of heroes, but they are in reality pawns, praised for their attempts at glory, but none can be saved. Leiser’s, as well at the entire Department’s, hubris of the old ways comes with a price. The final pages of condemnation of the bureaucracy ties the book together, but I still felt distant. This isn’t an idealistic Bond tale.