The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

⚖The case for it

No gadgets, no casinos, just a tired man doing paperwork and taking orders he half understands, which is why readers call it “grimly seedy, morally bankrupt and totally credible.” Leamas is unglamorous and compromised, and readers say they do not need to like him to believe every page of him. Nobody in it is enjoying the work, which was not how the genre read in 1963. The prose gets measured against Graham Greene rather than against thriller writers. The construction is “fiendishly clever both in its content and its exposition,” and readers who thought they had it worked out report “I did not see the twists that were coming.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The book opens on Leamas broke, sick and shelving books, and a critic counted “more time working in a library and picking fights with local grocers” than tradecraft before anything starts. Le Carré drops code names and past operations as though you had been briefed already, so “code phrases are used and not explained” and readers report “I never had any idea what was going on.” Liz Gold is barely written, and “she only exists so she can sit prettily and cry a lot.” The unbroken bleakness wears people down. “I know this is heresy but I’m not impressed,” one reader admits.

— the honest librarian

5h

honest hours

7

sittings