Our Kind of Traitor - John Le Carre

John Le Carre continues his series of post-Cold War spy novels with a cast of intelligence professionals and keen amateurs against the dangerous web of present-day Russian criminal syndicates and their limitless resources.  This is the story of a Russian mafioso called Dima, who meets by chance a young British couple, Perry and Gail, while they are holidaying in the Caribbean.  Dima will become 'lethally expendable' following a mafia reorganisation, and he decides to use Perry and Gail as go-betweens with British intelligence to trade knowledge for refuge for himself and his rag-tag extended family.  They are put in touch with Hector Meredith, a marginalised and close to retirement senior spy manager, who judges Dima's offer to be a career-redeeming, last big operation. 

Hector and his number two Luke, who is similarly marginalised, take Perry and Gail through the ensuing action, to an abrupt ending, which though written large from the beginning, comes as a shock nevertheless. 

There was some disappointment to find that the plot does not stand very close scrutiny, and is unbelievable in parts, and sometimes a bit convenient, like the original meeting in Antigua.  Nevertheless, it is a good read, though Le Carre's distinctive voice jars a little in places and we are drawn back to the Cold War, when this story is set firmly in the current financial crisis threatening us all.   There is a wonderful account of a meeting between politicians and financiers on a yacht in the Adriatic - which unashamedly refers to Peter Mandelson's visit a couple of summers ago to a yacht in Corfu owned by a Russian oligarch.  Is what Dima has to sell of any value to the British?   The betrayal at the heart of the book is part of the degradation of everything around it.  Have things been turned upside-down so completely that is necessary for those who once held 'old-fashioned' values to depend on the proceeds of crime for survival?

 Highly recommended are two earlier novels by Le Carre,  'The spy who came in from the cold' and 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'.