On the passing of a great ...

Sad news in the world of spy fiction with the passing of David Cornwell, aka John Le Carré, aged 89 after a short illness.

What is there to say about him that hasn't already been said, not just in the last 24-hours in the numerous obituaries published around the globe, but over his sixty-year career.

The spy's spy fiction writer.

A literary giant

A writer who transcended the spy genre.

A chronicler of our age.

He was clearly all these things and much, much more. It is rare to find anyone who enjoys reading spy fiction who has not read some - all - of Le Carré's books, from the most famous ones like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, to lesser-known works such as The Mission Song.

His contribution to the genre is without doubt. 

He was also a contemporary of Len Deighton (who is the older of the two, at 91 years old) as a spy fiction writer, and he, Deighton and Ian Fleming were, certainly in the 'sixties, often regarded as the big triumvirate of spy fiction authors who put the genre on the map and paved the way for many other authors in their wake.

While Len has been in effective retirement for two decades, Le Carré was writing new fiction well into his late eighties.

While readers around the world - and his books were popular in many markets beyond the UK and US - will mourn today, we shouldn't be too sad, because in a full and well-lived life he created unforgettable characters and stories which will remain with us for a long time to come.

Deighton & Le Carré .... spy fiction titans cut from different cloth

(c) Tom Jamieson, New York Times

This recent New York Times profile of John Le Carré is part of the growing pre-launch hubbub surrounding his new novel A Legacy of Spies, which is launched in September with a live interview of the author at the Royal Festival Hall.

The fever pitch reflects renewed interest in Le Carré's fifty years plus career as a novelist of note, arguably the greatest spy fiction thriller writer. The success of the TV adaptation of The Night Manager in 2016 and the film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, brought Le Carré's writing to a whole new generation.

While Le Carré's career has continued without pause since the end of the Cold War, by contrast Len Deighton's career has - since his last published novel Charity in 1996 - in effect trasnmuted into a well-deserved retirement (which he enjoys and which he evidently has no desire to leave). As such, their public - and online - profiles has gone in dramatically different directions over the last decade and more.

A contemporary of Len Deighton - Deighton is 88, Le Carré will soon be 86 - John Le Carré's life and writing career in a number of interesting ways contrasts with Deighton's.

Round-up - Smiley culture, X-rays and books within books....

Picked-up across the Inter-web some interesting things I thought I'd bring to the attention of the readers of the Deighton Dossier.

First up, The Guardian marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of John Le Carré's classic novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and challenged its readers to a quiz about how well they know the novel. I took it; shamefully, I only scored 5 out of 10. Far too long since I read the book!

Second, London's Evening Standard newspaper reported this week that Whiteley's, the West London department store, is to close and, inevitably, become luxury flats. The story by the paper's property correspondent looks back at the historical links with the store, which includes:

"In the film version of Billion Dollar Brain, the hero uses an X-ray machine in Whiteley's shoe department to examine the contents of a sealed package"

Why on earth does a shoe department need an X-ray machine?

Finally, I've just finished an excellent book at the moment which I'd go so far as to describe as 'the spy fiction fan's spy fiction. It's The Double Game by Dan Fesperman, a winner of the Crime Writers' Association of Britain's John Creasey Memorial Dagger award for The Small Boat of Great Sorrows.

The Double Game is set in 2012 and follows a journalist Bill Cage who inadvertently reveals a startling secret about a best-selling spy novelist, Edwin Lemaster, a friend of his father's and writer of the 'Folly' spy novels. He's drawn into a web of intrigue involved encoded messages, and the nub of the story rests on Cage's encyclopaedic knowledge of spy fiction, and the fact that he knows someone mysterious is testing his knowledge of spycraft. There are plenty of knowing references to blog readers' favourite writers, including Len, of course:

"In le Carré's Call for the Dead, George Smiley is summoned from sleep by a ringing telephone. In The Miernik Dossier, Charles McCarry's Paul Christopher is yanked from bed in Geneva by the doorbell. In Berlin Game, Len Deighton's Bernard Samson waits in the midnight cold of Checkpoint Charlie for a contact who never shows. And in Knee Knockers, Lemaster's Richard Folly is lured into the murk of predawn Prague. Such a lonely procession of nocturnal seekers. Literally and figuratively they were all in the dark. Now, so was I, an unlikely initiate to the midnight brethren."

Definitely one that's worth checking out.