A most wanted man : [a novel

From Publishers Weekly When boxer Melik Oktay and his mother, both Turkish Muslims living in Hamburg, take in a street person calling himself Issa at the start of this morally complex thriller from le Carr? (_The Mission Song_), they set off a chain of events implicating intelligence agencies from three countries. Issa, who claims to be a Muslim medical student, is, in fact, a wanted terrorist and the son of Grigori Karpov, a Red Army colonel whose considerable assets are concealed in a mysterious portfolio at a Hamburg bank. Tommy Brue, a stereotypical flawed everyman caught up in the machinations of spies and counterspies, enters the plot when Issa's attorney seeks to claim these assets. The book works best in its depiction of the rivalries besetting even post-9/11 intelligence agencies that should be allies, but none of the characters is as memorable as George Smiley or Magnus Pym. Still, even a lesser le Carr? effort is far above the common run of thrillers. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine While this novel may be le Carre's first take on espionage in Europe after the Cold War, critics could not be more divided over its quality. Alan Furst, himself one of the greats of the genre, opines that A Most Wanted Man might be one of the author's best, not for its content so much as for its technical brilliance. But other reviewers panned the work, arguing that le Carre's outrage over recent American intelligence practices distorts the plot and renders many of the characters as mere cliches. Perhaps the consensus is that A Most Wanted Man is an enjoyable le Carre novel (and therefore much better than most thrillers)—but far from his best. Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

A half-starved young Russian man is smuggled into Hamburg in the dead of night with an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.

Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation, even if the price is her career—and her safety. Searching for clues to his mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous sixty-year-old scion of a failing British bank—and a triangle of impossible loves is born.

Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the “War on Terror,” the rival spies of three nations converge upon the innocents.

Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity with uncommon relevance to our times.

The Barnes & Noble Review

As the Soviet Union began to collapse and the Cold War petered out, John le Carré is said to have remarked drily that "they're breaking my rice bowl." But with A Most Wanted Man, it begins to look as if those signature Cold War novels were but appetizers to the substantial dish he has put together from the "war on terror." Thanks to that all-encompassing, massively funded construct of fear, the power and autonomy of intelligence organizations -- the "espiocracy" as le Carré so perfectly dubs it -- have surpassed anything before seen in democratic societies. That dominion has not been limited to expanded surveillance, summary imprisonment, abduction, torture, and assassination, though all that has advanced nicely. It has also shaped an intelligence lens that filters out everything but threats of one sort or another, not the least of them being threats to the exercise of a free hand. The war on terror has become a turf war in which ostensible allies coolly wrong-foot each other and, more tragically, a force field into which countless innocent people have unwittingly strayed to be casually destroyed. It is a subject for which John le Carré might have been born.

A half-starved young Russian man claiming to be a devout Muslim, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, and a sixty-year-old scion of a failing British bank based in Hamburg form an unlikely alliance as the rival spies of Germany, England and America scent a sure kill in thelian"War on Terror," and converge upon the innocents A half-starved young Russian man claiming to be a devout Muslim, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, and a sixty-year-old scion of a failing British bank based in Hamburg form an unlikely alliance as the rival spies of Germany, England and America scent a sure kill in the "War on Terror," and converge upon the innocents