BOOK REVIEW--Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carre

Reviewed by Bill Breakstone, November 16, 2010

The English author John le Carre has written 22 novels, the first being Call for the Dead, published in 1961. I have read and enjoyed every one. He is one of those authors I just can’t get enough of.

His latest work is Our Kind of Hero, and has been critically acclaimed as one of his best. I don’t know if I would go that far, but it is a tremendously good read.

The story opens at a Caribbean island resort, where Oxford professor Perry Makepiece is vacationing with his long-time companion Gail Perkins. Perry is a top-flight amateur tennis player, and is introduced by the resort’s tennis pro to a mysterious Russian national named “Dima,” also a splendid player, but no match for Makepiece, who “sandbags” the two sets in a typically and gentlemanly British show of fairness and good sportsmanship. This immediately impresses Dima, and the two and Gail become intimate friends. A bit too intimate, it turns out.

For Dima is the world’s most powerful money launderer, and is near the top of the Russian mafia. However, there is big trouble in Moscow’s underworld, and Dima wants out, for both himself and his family. He confides all this with Perry, and asks the Oxford Don if he is in reality a spy. When Perry truthfully says “absolutely not,” Dima asks if he has any contacts within MI6. Dima has some state secrets that should very much interest them, and he proceeds to fill Perry in. Perry immediately realizes that Dima’s secrets are powerful stuff indeed, in that he places several highly positioned British diplomats right in the middle of the Russian Mafia’s influence. I won’t divulge any more of the storyline than that; let the reader take it from there.

The author’s characterizations are brilliantly realized, and his reserved, very English method of storytelling has always fascinated this reader, and does so here once again. Le Carre is nearing his 70th birthday, but has lost none of his narrative powers. His fans are many; then again there are readers who have never taken a liking to his style. Count me among the former. May he write many more tales such as this one, and enjoy decades more of good health and literary happiness.