A Small Town in Germany

Le Carré's fifth book is situated in and around the British embassy in Bonn, the post-WW II capital of West Germany, during the second half of the 1960s. The political context of the book is rather contrived: The United Kingdom (UK) has lost its empire and is bankrupt. In West Germany anti-British feeling is running high with violent demonstrations. A populist politician urges people to turn their back on the three former occupying nations and chart a new course for the nation, block UK-entry into the Common Market (precursor to the EU: the UK succeeded only in 1973), and support a trade alliance with Moscow. While the Bonn embassy is preparing for the worst (mass demonstrations and a possible attack on its premises), a lowly diplomat, who is a temp and a former refugee with 20 years of service, fails to turn up for work. The embassy's most secret file is gone too, along with sundry other items, ranging from cups and saucers to an entire trolley loaded with files. Has he defected, run off to Moscow? London sends one of its security hard men, Alan Turner, to sort out the mess. He confronts and offends everybody he speaks with in his search for truth, and he moves on and on, uncovering small and big secrets. Meanwhile, he is furious about his wife's infidelity with an upper class type, who tend to man and staff foreign embassies. The book is memorable for several reasons: how large embassies went about their business operationally and socially during the Cold War; the memorable cast of diplomats and support staff; the significance of class in a British context, and the alleged shiftiness of German high-level contacts. Finally, this complicated book is an experiment of not sending George Smiley (he is not mentioned at all), but Alan Turner to do battle. Unfaithful wives is what they have in common, and passion for truth and justice in an environment full of hypocrisy, indifference and lethargy. Highly recommended.

When Leo Harting, a German employee of the British Embassy in Bonn (the titular small town in Germany), goes missing with confidential files, London sends Alan Turner to investigate. With anti-British sentiment at a fever pitch in Cold War West Germany, Harting's disappearance takes on significant importance. Is Harting a communist? A neo-Nazi? As Turner pursues his investigation, it soon becomes clear that Harting was a fixture about the embassy, known to all and yet completely unknown. Moreover, Turner comes to the realization that Rawley Bradfield, head of the embassy, is not interested in helping Turner, despite his assurances to the contrary. "A Small Town in Germany" is my first John Le Carre novel. It won't be my last. Le Carre's reputation as a master of the spy-thriller is well-founded. Publically, writing as the "anti-Ian Fleming," Le Carre concentrates on plausibility (in fairness, Fleming's early books were more plausible than the films). The plot of this book is single-minded: Turner's tenacious search for Harting and his conflict with Bradfield even as events are straining German domestic stability and international relations. Indeed, instead of a lengthy chase novel with Turner trading shots with Harting through the streets of Bonn, Le Carre writes of Turner's more realistic battle with a distracted bureaucracy as he pieces together just who Harting is, and why Bradfield felt compelled to keep him around for so long. Le Carre is quite careful to obscure the truths of his plot. The answer as to why Harting has vanished and how this relates to the unrest in West Germany is surprising, and speaks to Le Carre's gift for misdirection. While this novel is plot driven, Le Carre allows his characters to grow. Turner, Harting and Bradfield come to us as complete unknowns. We have some vague notions of Turner's past, but Le Carre doesn't simply give us traumatic events in his life to define him. Rather, he uses Turner's speech and actions to show us that Turner is decent, but driven, and with a limited capacity to relate to people. We sympathize with Turner's need to find Leo, not only because it is his job, but because he's naturally inquisitive. He MUST know what makes Leo tick. We also sympathize with Turner as he runs into multiple brick-walls set up by Bradfield and his personnel. We also realize that in any other circumstance, Turner's qualities might make him less likable. The final plot resolution in fact rests on revelations of the protagonists true nature: Harting isn't truly sinister, and Turner isn't so dogged and without true emotion. Le Carre wears his politics on his sleeve. He's obviously cynical about the foreign relations and intelligence communities, and, in this book, expresses a dim view (mostly, but not completely, dated) of the German people. He admits in his 1991 introduction that he may have fallen into the trap of Germans = Nazis. In a way, this is ironic, as up until the last 40 or so

This might be Le Carre's most ambitious and best written book. It contains a host of well drawn characters and the clever plotting typical of all Le Carre's best work. As with his other good books, Le Carre uses the spy novel format to investigate matters well beyond the usual formulas of thrillers. This book is set in Bonn, in the late 50s or early 60s. Almost all the action takes place within the British embassy. The latter is depicted as a microcosm of British society, with its class, ethnic, and religous divisions, its repressions and emphasis on maintaining British prestige. This book is an allegory and devastating critique of British national policy in that period. Le Carre shows the insularity of British society, its inability to deal with reduction to a second-rate military and economic power, and its preference for preferring shabby deals maintaining British prestige to concrete achievements.

A fascinating plot, with characteristically rich character development. Even the minor players are drawn carefully, in, well, loving detail (the British ambassador's wife with the lovely arms (a la T.S. Eliot), the diplomat-asthete with the harpsichord he never quite gets around to playing, the Dutch diplomat who cruelly points out the historical inaccuracies in a guest's dinner polemic, etc. The end has a rather grand twist that causes the whole thing to linger in the mind for weeks after, like the "Spy Who Came in from the Cold". One of my favorite 20th century novels period.

No Smiley, no Karla, Moscow Centre is only an unconfirmed shadow over the horizon as Le Carre takes his scalpel to a British mission under siege in Bonn somewhere in the undated late 50s/early 60s. The most visible threat is a rabble-rosuing demagogue who is stirring up German passions with talk of a Germany that is being trod all over by its conquerors (a tactic used in fact very successfully by an up-and-coming politician after the First War - I think his outfit was called the National Socialist Party!) Among the usual undercurrents and tensions of the British mission - basically a for-export version of Whitehall, with all its petty intrigues and shallow secrets - there is mounting tension over an upcoming rally, the unexplained murder of the librarian of a British library that is actually a German library and the solicitiousness of a police chief whose concern rings as true as a shark's regard for a school of minnows. Against this backdrop they struggle to deal with, and keep quiet, the disappearance of a low-level staffer and some oh-so-critical files. London's man Turner starts cutting to the heart of the matter and finds that he needs no enemies outside the mission - the ones inside would do him nicely! Sprebly plotted and with a *genuine* twist at the end, this is one of Le Carre's absolute best - it's Le Carre for those (like the present writer) who were intimidated by The Little Drummer Girl in infancy and never dared again!