There is a Palestinian bomber targeting Jews in Europe. His most recent attack in Germany missed its target but killed a young boy and maimed his mother. Martin Kurtz, an Israeli intelligence officer, arrives to investigate. He learns that the bomb was delivered by a college-aged Scandinavian blonde who claimed to be friends with the vacationing Swedish nanny. Other bombings had similarly made use of attractive European women to deliver bombs. Meanwhile in Greece, Charmian "Charlie" Ross and her band of actors were on vacation after touring the stages of England. Charlie was a particularly talented actress who also had a history of extreme leftist politics. Charlie and her group take note of a handsome man who is rather standoffish; he's this fascinating mystery that they want to solve. Everyone tries to impress Joseph and he eventually consents to fraternize. In fact, Joseph is an Israeli operative who recruits Charlie to infiltrate the bomb operation and allow Kurtz and him to eliminate Khalil, the bomb mastermind.
I had not read John Le Carre until now and I'm indifferent to his style. The story is great, but he more often tells than shows. He sketches his characters by offering a flurry of vignettes that paint the character. It's like a literary montage. I found this mostly distracting. Nothing is happening, I'm just being told a random collection of things to outline a character. It's not just a sentence or two, but an outline of relationships, past incidents, various noteworthy events, revealed attitudes and opinions, and so forth tossed like a mixed salad. The first few chapters of the book were full of this as characters were introduced, giving it a glacial pace. Of course, once that is done, the pace improves somewhat. However, these montages also happen when a character stays in one place for a while. Yes, now there are small events to outline to show the character of the area, be it a quiet street in a German town or a Palestinian camp in Lebanon. There are long sequences of minutia, such as Kurtz portraying an American movie producer with Charlie's London agent in order to procure samples of her correspondence and handwriting. This is key to being able to forge her convincingly. On the one hand, I appreciate the attention to detail. On the other, there is a lot more of the genial drunk theatrical agent than you would expect in a spy novel. There is very little action but loads of tension. Often, the stakes seem massive on the next sentence a character might utter. Was that the right thing to say? Will the character ruin everything with a misstatement, a verbal faux pas? There are more often battles of words than bullets.
Charlie is the book. Recruited by Israelis, she has her leftist politics demolished during her 'audition' and finds that many of her beliefs are rooted in sand. She is soon won to the Israeli cause and gladly joins this 'theater of the real' to test the limits of her acting chops. The curtain never falls and the stakes get increasingly bigger as she consents to each escalation of her involvement. Once deep undercover, she finds herself siding with the beleaguered Palestinians. She has sunk so deep into her role that she often believes she had a love affair with a dead terrorist and longs to kill Zionists to avenge him. It is no wonder she convinces the Arabs of her sincerity, since she believes it herself. Can she hold herself together to the end or will she finally crack as her Israeli and Palestinian views drive her insane? Though I felt for Charlie, I didn't particularly like her.
Overall, a solid book and a good spy thriller.
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