A delicate truth

"A Delicate Truth opens in 2008. A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Cornwall, UK, 2011. A disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be-- or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher ('Kit') Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's beautiful daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary to the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, how can he keep silent?" -- from publisher's web site.

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	SCD FICTION LEC 9 DISCS	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	SCD FICTION LEC 9 DISCS	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife , is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.

Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to beÂor a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher (ÂKit") Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?
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Summary

From 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' author John Le Carre.

Author Notes

David John Moore Cornwell was born in Poole, Dorsetshire, England in 1931. He attended Bern University in Switzerland from 1948-49 and later completed a B.A. at Lincoln College, Oxford. He taught at Eton from 1956-58 and was a member of the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964.

He writes espionage thrillers under the pseudonym John le Carré. The pseudonym was necessary when he began writing, in the early 1960s because, at that time, he held a diplomatic position with the British Foreign Office and was not allowed to publish under his own name. When his third book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became a worldwide bestseller in 1964, he left the foreign service to write full time. His other works include Call for the Dead; A Murder of Quality; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People.

He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1986 and the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association in 1988. In 2011 he accepted the Goethe Medal. And in 2020, he accepted the Olof Palme Prize. Ten of his books have been adapted for television and motion pictures including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Russia House, The Constant Gardener, A Most Wanted Man, and Our Kind of Traitor.

Le Carré's memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from my Life, became a New York Times bestseller in 2016. In 2019, he published a spy thriller, Agent Running in the Field.

John Le Carré died on December 12, 2020 from pneumonia at the age of 89.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Guardian Review

A Delicate Truth savagely dramatises the "ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information". Half a century after the state-on-state espionage of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, spying has been privatised and opened up to defence contractors such as the shadowy Ethical Outcomes Ltd in this novel - with all the potential for massaging success rates and indulging shareholder whims that entails. Those familiar with the earlier books understand that Le Carre has no nostalgia for the ways of the past but is offering an exhaustive and comparative history of methods of national deceit and delusion. After the disappointingly sketchy Our Kind of Traitor (2011), which relied too heavily on hectic narration, 82-year-old Le Carre is back at full power with a book that draws on a career's worth of literary skill and international analysis. 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". - Mark Lawson A Delicate Truth savagely dramatises the "ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information". - Mark Lawson.

Library Journal Review

As demonstrated in his masterpiece, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, le Carre shines when writing about the infighting among the powerbrokers within the British government and the subsequent revelations about human frailty and the difficulty of recognizing evil. These themes are at play on a smaller scale here, building slowly to a chilling conclusion reminiscent of the end of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. This minor work may succeed better on audio than the printed page because of the consistent excellence of the reading. Le Carre's fiction is all about nuance and rhythm, and who better to know when to change emphasis and pace than the writer himself? While many authors are somewhat stilted when interpreting their works, le Carre is as skillful as any professional reader. It would be a joy to hear his Graham Greene or Eric Ambler. VERDICT Highly recommended for all collections. ["This is a guaranteed hair-raising cerebral fright, especially for anyone who enjoyed Robert Harris's The Ghost or who just knows his or her email account has been hacked," read the starred review of the Viking hc, LJ 4/15/13.-Ed.]-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr., New York (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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