John LeCarre and Me

My whole family has always John LeCarre. While they were talking about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (honestly, one of the most boring mini-series EVER) and Smiley's People, I was reading...something else. Probably Len Deighton, as he's always my Berlin Noir-Cold War writer of choice. I did get around to reading The Night Manager sometime in the 90's and I liked it very much-it was well-written and well-told. I also read Our Game, which I didn't like half as much. But when I ran across a used copy of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, I thought I'd give it a shot and see what all the fuss was about. Let me start first by saying what I liked about it-it was hard-nosed and (most of the time) there wasn't any of the Good Western Spies and Bad Eastern Commies. It reminded me that these people were doing their jobs and sometime ideology played into it and sometimes not-The Great Game, after all.
The plot revolves around Alec Leamas, 50, head of the Berlin station for MI6 (I think, LeCarre never says) who has been losing agents left and right. His last agent, who he turned from East Germany, was shot while crossing the Berlin Wall. He's angry and frustrated and is ready to retire and come in from the cold...until he's offered one last shot at his rival in East Berlin-Mundt, who "picked up my agents before we barely turned them" and was the one who had his last agent agent shot. he leaps at the last chance to after Mundt and begins on the long slide into decrepitude and poverty which will lead the Commies to make him an offer he can't refuse. It was at this point that I started thinking about the nameless agent in Len Deighton's books (I know he's called Harry Palmer in the movies, but he never has a proper name in the books). That guy might have figured something was up at this point but Leamas really wants to go after Mundt and figures he's been given his last shot to do it. Somehow, things don't work out as he planned...
I want to give this book its due. I'm sure up until this point, Cold War spy novels had been full of heroes and villains, with everyone picking one side or another and backing up the people on their side and everybody was either good or bad with only the bad guys betraying their friends-the good guys would never do that. Unfortunately, when Leamas's boss Control, came into the picture, I was reminded of another boss. That boss would be the one described the Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvet-the Pinkerton boss they called The Old Man-the one who who could send you to your death with a gentle smile and was so cold they said he could spit icicles in July. Leamas would have done well to remember that a spy really has no friends and that his boss viewed him as nothing more than a useful tool. So I'm sure that the nice little twist at the end came as a surprise to most people in 1965-unfortunately, I was waiting for it.
Still, it was good. I'd recommend it for its Berlin/Cold War atmosphere if nothing else-but I haven't decided whether I'll take on Tinker Tailor blah blah blah yet or not-we'll see.