Single & Single By John le Carre, Hodder & Stoughton, 335pp, £16.99 in UK
In retrospect, the late 1970s marked the last great frosty gasp of the Cold War. In 1974, John le Carre published Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the first volume of his superb Smiley versus Karla spy trilogy, to be followed in 1977 by The Honourable Schoolboy and in 1979 by the final volume, Smiley's People. The trilogy is arguably the greatest contribution ever made to the literature of spying.
Towards the end of 1978, with Smiley's People almost ready for publication and the BBC's adaptation of the first novel before the cameras, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated while queueing for public transport in London. (Had he been queueing for a bus in Dublin, his assassin could simply have waited for him to die of natural causes, but then history is filled with such "what if . . . ?s")
The manner of Markov's assassination - he was killed with a poisoned pellet fired from a modified umbrella - appeared to confirm that a secret dirty war was being fought in the shadows of major European cities. The novels that arose out of this hidden conflict came to occupy that curious grey area between fact and fiction, with incidents like Markov's death only adding to their apparent authenticity.
Among those novelists who chose the Cold War as their setting, le Carre (David Cornwell to his mum) was pre-eminent, so it must have come as something of a shock to him when the Cold War ended, as if someone had just stolen his wallet. He could have become a kind of literary cold warrior, left struggling by the thaw like some of the former Eastern European operatives about whom he once wrote; instead he has demonstrated an admirable ability to adapt to the new world order. In another life, he could be flogging weapons-grade plutonium to Middle Eastern despots.
Single & Single is le Carre's 17th novel, and while his previous novel, The Tailor of Panama, bowed its knee to Graham Greene, Single & Single contains elements of Dickens and, a little worryingly, John Grisham. Its title has echoes of Bleak House's Jarndyce & Jarndyce, and some of its character names - Toogood, Cadgwith, Brock, Samuel Watmore, Mr Ravilious - would not be out of place in Dickens's London, but its plot (idealistic young lawyer finds out that his dad's law firm is crooked and sets out to right some wrongs) probably has a twin somewhere in Grisham's filing cabinet. Oliver Single discovers that his father, legendary lawyer Tiger Single, is acting as a money launderer for Russian criminals, and that Oliver himself is being groomed to take over the operation. Faced with the firm's involvement in illegal blood-selling, crooked oil deals and possible drug-smuggling, Oliver turns informer. But when one of the firm's lawyers is murdered and Tiger goes on the run, Oliver is forced to track his father down before their enemies find them both.
This is not vintage le Carre, although even a slightly off-form le Carre is better than most other writers at the top of their game. The first third is splendid, adorned by le Carre's sly wit, a sympathetically-drawn supporting cast and a tense build-up as Oliver's cover is blown; but that build-up is allowed to continue just a little too long and, combined with lengthy flashbacks, slows the novel's pace throughout the second third.
As is usual with le Carre, Single & Single is beautifully written, impeccably researched and suffused with humanity, and as a study of filial loyalty persevering in the face of grave moral disquiet it is certainly effective, but to call it a thriller involves a gentle breach of the Trade Descriptions Act. Le Carre seems to deliberately eschew thrills, letting most of the action occur off the page and rationing dramatic action like jam in wartime.
Meanwhile, the main villains are - with only one real exception - an extremely polite bunch, so Oliver never appears to be in any real danger from them. (You may be an international criminal, the novel seems to say, but that's no excuse for bad manners.) The most threatening opponent of all, the crooked senior policeman Bernard Porlock, is under-used, making only one short, chilling appearance towards the end of the novel, as if waiting in the wings for a sequel.
This lack of tension, combined with an ending which seems too sudden and too neat, threatens to overshadow the novel's many strengths. There is an elegance and compassion here which is rare in such novels, and the backdrops of Georgia and Istanbul are as intricately constructed as the firm's laundering scams, but, for some, Single & Single may be a little too restrained to be truly gripping.
John Connolly's thriller Every Dead Thing has become a best-seller since publication by Hodder & Stoughton in January.