A Perfect Spy by John LeCarre

I've got a thing for LeCarre books. Smiley or otherwise. This one, A Perfect Spy, was very interesting. Written quite oddly, took me a dozen or three pages before I caught the gist. Spoilers follow.

This is not a Smiley book. There's nothing wrong about that. This isn't the first non-Smiley book of his I've read. I just read a month or so ago A Small Town in Germany. Others include The Little Drummer Girl, The Looking Glass War, and the Honourable Schoolboy. All great. LDG took a bit to get going, but once it did, it flew. Same with this.

In A Perfect Spy, we learn that Pym is committing espionage against his own country, the UK. But the way we learn it is through Pym himself writing down his life history, variably changing from first person singular, to third person, addressing his son then his mentor.

We are occasionally brought back to the present with narrative on his mentor trying to find him, as our man Pym, nom de guerre in hiding Canterbury, has disappeared himself, to give him enough time to write his memoir. You see, he wants to explain to his son and sometimes his mentor (but not his second wife, whom he married for work purposes, not love) the reasons for his treason.

Blame of course on his father. Granted, his father was a shit. But, Pym had opportunities to escape his final ruin. At the very start he could have, and maybe not even get caught. But Pym was weak, and went with what he knew and what was easy, and for him, probably, he missed.

By the end, last 20-25%, I was screaming through the book, dying to learn what all he did with Axel, the German, or Czech. (Depends upon if you trust what Axel is telling Pym.)  Of course, we learn that all along Axel had been running Pym, not the other way around.

In the end, Pym kills himself (I warned you about spoilers), not paying for his crimes, the bastard.

The book is wonderfully full of spy tradecraft and wonderful British wit and turn of phrase. For the language lover in me, lots of that, as well. Meaning, Pym was adept at languages and we get a nice little history of him studying languages at Oxford for his first or honours or whatever the hell the Brits call their bachelors degrees. Yes, that was enough to keep me interested in the beginning.

I think the next LeCarre book I'm gonna read, who knows when, will be Smiley's People, also procured at our local library book sale for a buck, just like A Perfect Spy.