Secret Pilgrim

Ned, the narrator, is nearing retirement from the British Intelligence, or "The Circus" as it is known. The book opens on the occasion of the traditional informal dinner that celebrates the end of the training of a new class of spies-to-be who will be among the first to operate in the post Cold War environment. Ned, who has been in charge of their training, has invited his already retired mentor, George Smiley, to speak at the get-together. To Ned's surprise, Smiley has accepted.
All this is in the way of setting the scene for the series of reminiscences that make up the meat of THE SECRET PILGRIM. Smiley, who has attained the status of a legend in the service, keeps the students entranced for hours and his comments trigger a life time of memories in Ned, who has been one of the Circus' key players in a forty year career that covered most of the Cold War years.
One of Ned's earliest experiences, in the final phase of his training, was when an older hand kept him from making a career ending faux pas. He misread a situation and believed that a member of a visiting Royal's retinue was an intended assassin. Ned, who was anxious to show off his new found skills was about to jump the "assassin" but was prevented from doing so by the more experienced agent. This was a learning experience that he never forgot.
As the evening progresses we share more of Ned's memories with him. One is when a murder is made to look like a suicide, and false evidence is left that was meant to discredit Ned.
At another time, almost every group of spies that he is "running" are betrayed, and a number of innocent people are thought to be the betrayers. The source of the betrayals remains a mystery until one of the top men in the Circus is found to be the traitor.
We go through many other life threatening, and occasionally humorous, escapades with him. As is frequently the case in Le Carre's novels, the deskbound, high level, decision makers run the gamut, from the rare competent and dedicated individuals, to the more common politically motivated self enhancers who build their own careers with no thought to the jeopardy in which they are putting their field agents.
The evening ends, and we accompany Ned as he passes the final days before his retirement.
With three days left to go, he is given one last assignment. He is charged with convincing a rather unpleasant multi-millionaire to stop providing armaments to various participants in conflicts throughout the world. These armaments are sold through an interlocking chain of corporations which he totally controls. Because of the international complexities of these corporate structures, the armament sales are technically legal. Unhappily for Ned his efforts are rebuffed. It is at this point that he remembers Smiley's old aphorism about the right people losing the Cold War but the wrong people winning it.
If you've never read Le Carre, this book should whet your appetite to go back in time and read his "Smiley" books. If you have read other of his books, I can't think of a better way to wrap them up.

And probably still be enthralled. The man has one of the most engaging, fluid, and delightful prose styles of anyone I've ever read. When it's connected with a powerful story (such as the books of the Karla Trilogy) the result is overpowering. When combined with leftovers from that era the result is...still a damn good read. What stops it short of a great read (4 stars) or a masterwork (5 stars) is one simple problem: Ned's stories (in fact the character himself) isn't anywhere near as interesting as George Smiley. Smiley's presence in this book actually detracts from the stories. It's like dropping Luciano Pavarotti into a men's choir. You're so busy trying to hear *him* that you can't enjoy the rest of the music.
Anyway, this is not a novel, it's a collection of short stories. Very good short stories. Brilliant not only for their intrigue, but simply for their literary quality. You do have to get past a few Le Carre trademarks (a tendency towards glibness, and a seeming inability to create female characters who are more than just surface), but these are less flaws than simply elements of the Le Carre style. You won't notice them as you're reading the stories. You won't notice much of anything else, either; these stories are completely engrossing, the kind that have you up until the wee hours telling yourself "just one more...ok, two more."
The Secret Pilgrim, however, does suffer from focusing on the wrong character, "Ned" instead of George Smiley. It's not a big problem, but at some points during my reading I found myself saying "hold on, let Smiley tell a story!" Who among us wouldn't have preferred a collection of short stories about the Master instead of his Acolyte? A tale or two of Smiley's days in Germany during the War, a Haydon story (or three), a sidelight on what he was doing while working on the Dolphin case (Honourable Schoolboy), and--greatest lack of all!--more information on Karla's debriefing after "Smiley's People." Talk about someone who would have some stories!
I sincerely hope that, before he retires from the writing game, Le Carre revisits some of his characters from the Karla Trilogy. A collection of stories about Smiley, Karla, Haydon, Control, and even young Peter Guilliam would be most welcome. It's not that his newer work is bad, just that it is completely overshadowed by his earlier work.
RstJ

This is one of my favorite Le Carre books. I admit that there are a few parts that may be dry, like the beginning, but other parts definately make up for it. I love that there are several stories that all tie up. This book reveals different aspects of the life of a spy. Makes you think about the job from different angles. I would recommend it to those who have the patience to get through a good book.

"The Secret Pilgrim," British spymaster John LeCarre's thirteenth book, was published in 1990, a year after the Berlin Wall was torn down, and the 30-year long Cold War was declared at an end. It was his first published post Cold War novel. LeCarre, who penned the Cold War masterpieces "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold,"and the Karla trilogy, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," "The Honourable Schoolboy," and "Smileys People," uses this book, several short stories cobbled together, that begin as the looming Berlin Wall has been up only two years, as a magisterial summing-up of the war that was.

The author sets much of it, as is his long-standing custom, in his German-speaking comfort zone, particularly Berlin, "the spy's eternal city," he calls it. The book is narrated by "Ned," a shrewd and loyal long-term employee of LeCarre's fictional intelligence service, modeled on the real one. Here, as elsewhere, LeCarre calls this service the circus, from its London location. Ned is currently teaching new recruits at Sarratt, its spy school, and contemplating retirement. He's thinking about the secret pilgrimage of his life, spent in the service, wondering, as is typical of the author, what it has gained him, or the world. He invites the "eminence grise" of the circus, George Smiley, to speak to the recruits.

The book is episodic; that may annoy some people. But it has LeCarre's usual writerly virtues, unbeaten spycraft, strong descriptive and narrative writing, complex, if brief, plotlets. Resonant characters and dialogue, a sturdy moral context. It is written in flashback, so the action may be a bit bloodless for some. But it gives an informative summation of the Smiley-Karla years. "Before the fall, " as the circus calls it, when Bill Haydon, its secret counterspy, mole in the terminology LeCarre created, is still burrowing from within. And "after the fall," picking up the pieces. And it offers new views of the circus's great knights: Smiley and his unfaithful wife Ann, Haydon, Peter Guillam, Tobe Esterhase. To Le Carre fans, it's all catnip. We even get an unexpected bonus: Ned is apparently the desk jockey who ran Barley Blair, star of "Russia House:" think Sean Connery. Ned reminisces about Blair, "We were trying to do a deal on him, but Barley wouldn't go along with us. He'd done his own deal already. He wanted his girl, not us."

Several of the component short stories are particularly memorable. An early one about Ben Arno Cavendish, Ned's oldest friend, who joins the circus with him and thereafter makes a little mistake with terrible consequences. A later one about the Lithuanian Captain Brandt and his beautiful girlfriend Bella -- also Ned's. A tale about Colonel Jerzy, high-ranking Pole, who finds his own way to Ned. And Hansen, the big, fair Scandinavian, active in Indochina during the Vietnam war: Ned says Hansen, deep in the Cambodian jungle, is his own Kurz, communicating from his own heart of darkness. Finally, there's Frewin, lonely Foreign Office cipher clerk, with all security clearances; seduced into Russia's service by the language lessons of Boris and Olga on early morning radio. This is the war that was, indeed.

Vintage John LeCarre',

I recently discovered this book and bought it. If youre a George Smiley fan youre certain to enjoy it. The book is punctuated with Smiley vignettes, and I got enough Smiley from this reading to satisfy my appetite.

That said, the book is really the Circus memoir of a character named Ned. Smiley touches Ned's memories, and Ned fills the pages with long stories about people and events of the Circus past. I think its some of LeCarre's best writing.