Title: Agent Running in the Field
Author: John LeCarré
Genre: Espionage Fiction
Pages: 288
Rating: 4 of 5

Diehard Trumpers and Brexiteers beware: you probably won’t enjoy the opinions expressed in this book. Authors don’t necessarily hold the same views as their characters, and LeCarré does place the most inflammatory/profane commentary in the mouth of an obnoxious ranting loudmouth, but still…

Personally, I enjoyed this more than any of the other non-Cold War LeCarré books I have read. It doesn’t have the complexity and tension of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or his other Cold War masterpieces, but it’s a decent spy yarn. While it has a tinge of disillusionment like all of the author’s work, he is not in full on bleak mode.

The first person narration (rare for LeCarré) has a slightly ironic tone as our protagonist recounts his last grand adventure running agents from a neglected little Russian counterintelligence station in England. The plot features at least one double agent and lot of internal politics of British intelligence as impacted by the external chaos of Trump and Brexit (as well as a lot of hanging out at the badminton club).

The ending was very abrupt.