RE: RARA-AVIS: Greene's ORIENT EXPRESS 1932

From: Robison Michael R CNIN ( Robison_M@crane.navy.mil)
Date: 11 Nov 2002


Colin wrote: Pleased to see This Gun getting an airing Miker and very glad that you enjoyed it. It's one of my favourites, and I think the closest that Greene got to HB and, if not Noir it is as atmospheric as most of his works, perhaps Gris? If you like Greene you may well enjoy Le Carre's espionage thrillers. In latter years they have become more self-conciously literary in style, but

he is a great writer - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is an accesible, self contained starting point...

********** It's hard not to like a book that starts off with, "Murder didn't mean much to Raven. It was just a job." This book delivers. There's some interesting chemistry between the characters, too (being purposely vague here).

I read a certain spy novel a long time ago, and I think it was THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. Maybe I'm wrong. But the ending had a long, drawn out court room drama where evidence is built up and then broken down, and I didn't like that. It has nothing to do with the quality of the writing; I just have a personal dislike for court room scenes and lawyer mumbo jumbo. I didn't like the lawyer stuff in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. The book was so pure and direct and hard-hitting, and then it pulls in all that clever stuff.

But I've been looking hard at Le Carre. Does the book I describe above sound like SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD? Didn't Le Carre write a Smiley series? What about the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy? My apologies if I'm getting several authors mixed up here.

miker

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Nov 2002 EST