Nigeyb's Reviews > A Perfect Spy

A Perfect Spy (1986) by John le Carré is quite hard work for the first two thirds of the book however I stuck with it and was really glad I did. In the final third it comes together beautifully.

I was also pleased I'd already read John le Carré: The Biography by Adam Sisman, as A Perfect Spy is very autobiographical and much of the plot concerns John le Carré's own upbringing, and in particular his appalling conman father Ronnie Cornwell who masqueraded as a successful entrepreneur making and losing several fortunes whilst also being twice imprisoned for fraud.

A Perfect Spy centres on fugitive MI6 officer Magnus Pym, who it soon turns out might have been a double agent with Czech intelligence. The novel's forensic account of Pym's life and psychology beautifully exposes the kind of damaged and compromised individual who makes the perfect spy.

Whilst it's not up there with the Karla trilogy, or even The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and despite being somewhat repetitious in the opening sections, it slowly builds into something very special.

Philip Roth described it as "the best English novel since the war". Hmmm. He's clearly not read the Sword of Honour trilogy or Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time books however it is undeniably very good. Not right up there with John le Carré's finest work, but by any ordinary writer's standard this would be an extraordinary book and a career high.

4/5

In this most beguiling of spy stores, John le Carré guides us effortlessly through fifty years of alternative Britain, introducing us along the way to a hilarious company of ambulance chasers, war racketeers, shady lawyers, property sharks, lovelies and fixers; and then to Occupied Austria, to Czechoslovakia, Berlin, and finally to the goal of every ambitious traitor of our time – America.