Single & Single by
John Le Carre
hbk out Feb 99
Published by Headline Audio
at £14.99
Le Carré has left behind the warped certainties of the Cold War and moved instead into the moral jungle which has succeeded it. Tiger Single runs a venture-capital investment house which exploits to the full the financial opportunities the jungle offers. For Tiger, the profit motive is king. His son Oliver, however, cannot stomach what his father is doing and throws up his gilded position as heir apparent. Worse than that, he feeds information to H.M.Customs and Excise.
Tiger's empire begins to unravel, causing serious losses for some of Single & Single’s clients -- among them a close-knit group of Georgian gangsters who have grown fat on the ruins of the Soviet Union. They want compensation in money and in blood. Tiger goes on the run.
Since this is Le Carré, here comes the crunch: the strands of loyalty and betrayal which form the relationship between Tiger and Oliver. It's one thing to blow the whistle on an immoral business, but quite another to stand by and let your father be murdered because of it. Oliver has to find his father before the Georgians to.
That is the mainspring of a plot which spans many nations and several continents. Le Carré is a master story-teller who has lost none of his skill. He creates a wonderfully plausible illusion of knowingness, whether writing about bent police officers in the Metropolitan police, the sale of blood on the Russian black market or all the professional secrets of a seaside conjuror.
If you have the opportunity, it's well worth seeking out the audio version of the book, which although abridged has the advantage of being read by the author. Le Carré has a professional actor's voice with a superb ear for mimicry.
Le Carré himself has pointed out that this book addresses many of the themes he explored in The Perfect Spy, notably "the anguished relationship between errant father and trapped son". Single & Single also provides some unpleasant truths about modern Russia, and about the West's cynical relationship with it.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth and Lydmouth Series)
Single & Single by
John Le Carre