Book Log 2011 #20: Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carre

This latest outing finds a British couple recruited by some arm of the intelligence community to help in the defection of a top money launderer for the Russian mob. The couple, a university professor and barrister, are rank novices but are game to help, and thanks to the shared love of tennis between the couple and the Russian, we're off and running.

The New York Times review of the book noted that the story, while set in the present, trades in many of the spy novel tropes of the Cold War, and while there's a truth to it I think the review doesn't fully attribute the reason for it. The review suggests that Le Carre, while as strong a writer as ever, is stuck in presenting his story in this sort of worldview. I think there's some truth in that, but also ascribe it to the nature of the characters. Several of the agents are longer-term employees, and as such were reared in the Cold War-era spy game. Their actions and thinking would, to some extent, be stuck in that period. It would be as much of a mistake to have all of the agents be postmodern 24-style homeland security types as if they were all James Bond.

All that being said, I enjoyed this as much as any of Le Carre's post-Cold War novels.