Our Kind of Traitor

Starred review from August 9, 2010
Those readers who have found post–cold war le Carré too cerebral will have much to cheer about with this Russian mafia spy thriller. While on holiday in Antigua, former Oxford tutor Perry Makepiece and his lawyer girlfriend, Gail Perkins, meet Dmitri "Dima" Vladimirovich Krasnov, an avuncular Russian businessman who challenges Perry to a tennis match. Even though Perry wins, Dima takes a shine to the couple, and soon they're visiting with his extended family. At Dima's request, Perry conveys a message to MI6 in England that Dima wishes to defect, and on arriving home, Perry and Gail receive a summons from MI6 to a debriefing. Not only is Dima a Russian oligarch, he's also one of the world's biggest money launderers. Le Carré ratchets up the tension step-by-step until the sad, inevitable end. His most accessible work in years, this novel shows once again why his name is the one to which all others in the field are compared.

August 15, 2010

Le Carré uses still another aspect of international relations in the new world order—the powerful, equivocal position of money launderers to the Russian mob—to put a new spin on a favorite theme: the betrayal that inevitably follows from sharply divided loyalties.

In between his hated old life as an Oxford don and his dimly imagined new life as a grade-school teacher, Peregrine Makepiece takes his girlfriend, rising barrister Gail Perkins, on holiday to Antigua. Their prowess on the tennis court is observed by an amiable Russian who presses Perry to play him. But Dima, né Dmitri Vladimirovich Krasnov, wants much more than a game. In return for providing details to Her Majesty's Secret Service about his money laundering for the Seven Brothers, who dominate Russian organized crime, he wants asylum and protection for himself and his family. He wants his children to be placed in top English schools. And he wants Perry to hold his hand through it all. Following their exhaustive debriefing by Luke and Yvonne, a pair of jaundiced spooks, Perry and Gail are sent to Paris, where Dima has asked for a meeting that's clearly supposed to set the stage for his flight from his comrades. Don't try to behave like spies, Perry and Gail are advised—act innocent. That's easily done, because the couple is much more innocent than they realize. Although they know more than they ought to about Dima's family, especially his daughter Natasha, they know next to nothing about his business associates, and nothing at all of Luke's fragile position in the Service, or his boss Hector Meredith's complicated set of conflicts with financiers, lawyers, lobbyists and Members of Parliament whose agendas are quite different from Hector's, Luke's, Perry's or Dima's.

While other novelists are doing everything they can to inflate their tales of cloak and dagger, trust Le Carré (A Most Wanted Man, 2008, etc.) to make his story of international money laundering, political infighting and unwitting treachery into a chamber symphony of exquisite delicacy.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2010

Le Carre (A Most Wanted Man) launches his latest exploration into the dodgy world of espionage on a surprisingly cozy note. An attractive couple vacationing in Antigua meet Dima, a hale and hearty Russian businessman, and his charming children. Tennis, then parties, and soon Perry and Gail are trusted companions of the family. Shockingly, Dima asks Perry to be his negotiator with British intelligence. The payload? Dima is a world-class money launderer and can reveal embarrassing and compromising deals at the highest (and lowest) levels of the world's financial brotherhoods. In his inimitable and engrossing way, Le Carre put us right at the 50-yard line of the ensuing desperate brawl as the Brits fight to control this asset. VERDICT As fresh as this morning's dish on Twitter and as nerve-racking as the evening news, this novel is sure to thrill faithful fans and attract newcomers to Le Carre's considerable list of 21 previous novels. A sure bet for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/10.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2010
In his last few novels, le Carr' has exhibited a remarkable ability to turn multiple forms of international chicanery into gripping, incisive fiction, seemingly before the end of the news cycle. In The Constant Gardener (2001), it was drug testing in Africa by the pharmaceutical industry; in A Most Wanted Man (2008), it was the way the anti-terror industry runs havoc over individual lives. Now, its something a little different: international money-laundering. It starts when two idealistic young professionals, one an Oxford professor, the other a lawyer, take a tennis vacation in Antigua, where they meet an unsavory Russian who claims to be the worlds Number One money-launderer. Dima wants Perry and Gail to help him defect to the Westnot from Russia, in the cold war sense, but from the Russian underworld, whose leaders have decided he knows too much. One of the things Dima knows is which British vulture capitalists have used Russian Mob money to survive the collapse of the banking industry. It is a complex but fascinating subject, and le Carr' dissects it brilliantly. As usual, though, the real focus isnt on sorting out good guys from bad; its on the somber realization that there are no good guys, that the British Secret Service is no more trustworthy than the Russian Mafia. Perry and Gail, the latest in a long line of le Carr' nafs to learn that institutions prey on individuals, grow up painfully but with considerable grace. In the world as le Carr' finds it, grace under pressure is about as good as it gets.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

August 15, 2010

Le Carr� uses still another aspect of international relations in the new world order--the powerful, equivocal position of money launderers to the Russian mob--to put a new spin on a favorite theme: the betrayal that inevitably follows from sharply divided loyalties.

In between his hated old life as an Oxford don and his dimly imagined new life as a grade-school teacher, Peregrine Makepiece takes his girlfriend, rising barrister Gail Perkins, on holiday to Antigua. Their prowess on the tennis court is observed by an amiable Russian who presses Perry to play him. But Dima, n� Dmitri Vladimirovich Krasnov, wants much more than a game. In return for providing details to Her Majesty's Secret Service about his money laundering for the Seven Brothers, who dominate Russian organized crime, he wants asylum and protection for himself and his family. He wants his children to be placed in top English schools. And he wants Perry to hold his hand through it all. Following their exhaustive debriefing by Luke and Yvonne, a pair of jaundiced spooks, Perry and Gail are sent to Paris, where Dima has asked for a meeting that's clearly supposed to set the stage for his flight from his comrades. Don't try to behave like spies, Perry and Gail are advised--act innocent. That's easily done, because the couple is much more innocent than they realize. Although they know more than they ought to about Dima's family, especially his daughter Natasha, they know next to nothing about his business associates, and nothing at all of Luke's fragile position in the Service, or his boss Hector Meredith's complicated set of conflicts with financiers, lawyers, lobbyists and Members of Parliament whose agendas are quite different from Hector's, Luke's, Perry's or Dima's.

While other novelists are doing everything they can to inflate their tales of cloak and dagger, trust Le Carr� (A Most Wanted Man, 2008, etc.) to make his story of international money laundering, political infighting and unwitting treachery into a chamber symphony of exquisite delicacy.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)