A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony, Gibraltar. Its purpose- to capture a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors- an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend.
John le Carre was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a confidence trickster, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carre widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on 12 December 2020.
Perhaps the most significant novelist of the second half of the
20th century in Britain . . . He should have won the Booker Prize a
long time ago. It's time he won it and it's time he accepted it.
He's in the first rank.
*Telegraph*
No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but
thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his
times, from the Second World War to the "War on Terror"
*Guardian*
One of those writers who will be read a century from now
*Robert Harris*
With A Delicate Truth, le Carré has in a sense come home. And it's
a splendid homecoming . . . Satisfying, subtle and compelling
*The Times*
The perfectly paced, exquisitely cynical style that is le Carré's
hallmark
*Sunday Times*
The master of the modern spy novel returns . . . this is writing of
such quality that - as Robert Harris put it - it will be read in
one hundred years
*Daily Mail*
A brilliant climax, with sinister deaths, casual torture, wrecked
lives and shameful compromises
*Observer*
A writer of towering gifts . . . le Carré is one of the great
analysts of the contemporary scene, who has a talent to provoke as
well as unsettle
*Independent*
John le Carré takes us back to his favourite scenarios: Whitehall,
the secret services, the gentleman's clubs, dodgy bankers, corrupt
public schoolboys and gruesome American neo-cons . . . revelling
once more in that imaginary world of secrets and lies that is le
Carré's gift to us
*Evening Standard*
Thrilling, suspenseful . . . Fans will not be disappointed
*Sunday Express*
Utterly convincing characters, a tight plot . . . Wonderful
*Sunday Mirror*
Thrilling
*Express*
Choreographed with unsettling precision
*Metro*
When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le
Carré ... they were a journey into the wider world ... These were
the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from
the rest of humankind
*Aung San Suu Kyi*
Plunges the reader into a modern-day thriller...Dad won't be able
to put it down
*Metro*
[It] has all the essential ingredients of his masterpieces: the
dilemmas of duty, patriotism and decency
*Metro 'Books of the Year'*
John Le Carré at his masterful best . . . nobody does it better
*The Times 'Books of the Year'*
Widely hailed as a return to the good old Smiley days . . . le
Carré writes with laconic elegance
*The Times 'Books of the Year'*
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