Jeremy Wheale is ‘a grey little man in a grey little job’ who doesn't fit in well in swinging London. His brother is murdered and he finds himself embroiled in the search for a lost Mayan city in the Yucutan peninsula. His companions are a rich old ar­chae­ol­o­gist, a paranoid young ar­chae­ol­o­gist, and his attractive wife. Somewhere out in the jungle is a Mafia don who's convinced that there's a hoard of gold in Uaxuanoc.

Wheale is an ordinary man who rises to the occasion. As the tension grows, he …continue.

Rudi Rosenharte is an East German academic, re­luc­tant­ly working for the Stasi, in the months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Stasi are holding his twin brother, Konrad, hostage. Rudi's desperate to get Konrad and his family out, and he's recruited by British In­tel­li­gence.

Rudi ends up keeping four in­tel­li­gence services at bay, as he walks along an ever more precarious tightrope. The plot is, of course, im­plau­si­ble. The book brings the sheer nastiness of a police state to life, and shows the East German state collapsing as …continue.

Suzanne Milner is a graduate student re­search­ing young offenders in Sheffield. She finds the body of a young woman. Soon another young woman's body is found. There seems to be an un­ex­plained connection between several young people.

Listen to the Shadows works fairly well as a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller: there are enough twists and mis­di­rec­tion to keep us off-balance and guessing until the end. The pro­tag­o­nist, though, is an ex­as­per­at­ing mess. Beset by deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and festered guilt, she spends most of the book being buffeted by events, reacting helplessly, …continue.

Timothy Cranmer is a former spy handler, put out to pasture at the end of the Cold War. Larry Pettifer, left-wing academic and Byronic espouser of lost causes, was not only Cranmer's best double agent but a friend and rival since childhood.

Now Larry has gone missing, as has 37 million pounds and Cranmer's young mistress, Emma. Cranmer is thought to be an accomplice. Cranmer must find Larry. The trail will take him deep in the Caucasus.

The book moves slowly through the first half, until Cranmer finally decides to take action and …continue.

Lee Donne agrees to housesit for her absent-minded grand­fa­ther. Soon, someone is trying to scare her out of the house in Eugene, Oregon. Buried deep in the house, she discovers why: old photos of young men lynching a black man. One of those men is now running for President as a third-party candidate.

Lee goes on the run and takes her story to a newspaper. She decides to hide in plain sight, à la The Purloined Letter, and heads to New Orleans, posing as a newspaper pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Fairly en­ter­tain­ing and in­tel­li­gent thriller.

Smiley's People is the last book in le Carré's Karla Trilogy, begun in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and continued in The Honourable Schoolboy.

George Smiley is called back from retirement when one of his former contacts, a Russian general turned emigré, is found murdered. Working alone and exercising his con­sid­er­able tradecraft, Smiley discovers a fatal chink in the armor of his old adversary, Karla, the Russian spymaster. He gets the go-ahead to execute a sting, which will ultimately lead to Karla's defection.

Once again, le Carré crafts a subtle and …continue.

The second novel of le Carré's Karla Trilogy, following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and preceding Smiley's People.

The "Circus" (MI6) is in sorry shape after the mole "Gerald" was unmasked. George Smiley, now head of the Circus, must go on the offense. They find a trail of money leading to a Hong Kong busi­ness­man, Drake Ko. Jerry Westerby, a newspaper reporter and occasional agent, is sent out to Hong Kong to shake Ko's tree.

Smiley is a secondary character here. Jerry is the honourable schoolboy of the …continue.

After panning Prior Bad Acts and Adept, I needed to read a good book. I found it in John le Carré's classic cold war spy novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

George Smiley, quiet, unassuming, pudgy, and easily overlooked, is recently retired from the Service (MI6, the British in­tel­li­gence agency). He is secretly tasked with finding a mole in the highest reaches of the Service, run by Karla, a KGB spymaster. The mole can only be one of the four most senior men. Smiley begins piecing together the evidence from …continue.

A ninja with improbable abilities steals an ancient Tibetan artifact in London. David Braun, hunky insurance in­ves­ti­ga­tor cum martial artist, sets out to recover it with the aid of Susan Milton, an American researcher. I can tell you no more, because I could't bring myself to finish it.

It is rare that I abandon a book halfway through once begun, though perhaps I should more often. Adept is ludicrous and clumsily written. I found it impossible to suspend my disbelief.