The Looking Glass War: A George Smiley Novel

found this book to be a major disappointment, as I am usually totally enthralled by nearly every other John le Carre bookI have every read and I have read most of them more than once. The book was totally predictable plot from the 2nd chapter to the merciful end. A MAJOR DISSAPOINTMENT ,from my favourite author.

Ego and incompetence at the helm of any enterprise could give rise to a Dilbertian farce in comic books. Along with the heady mix created by mis-estimation of the environment or one’s own abilities, they give rise to the largest tragedies in families - most of the times unavoidable and hence with a life long place in memories. When combined further with ambitions of quick results, they possibly lead to the largest number of casualties in wars including the Cold variety. This is the dismal, and important, singular theme of the book but for some obvious reasons it does not have the right impact.

From the start to the end, the book pervades with the tragico-comical aura with the tragedy part certainly dominating. Such relentless glum needs an author that excels in melodrama, one who sentimentally binds the readers to the fated, tickles all the sensitivies and sympathies to pull the fully-suspecting reader to a high emotional cliff and then plunge him into an abyss by the end. There are many literary masters who know the larger importance of the emotion-strewn build-up of such stories and Le Carre is not one of them. His factual orientation and sharp, pithy writing - things that are his hallmark strengths otherwise - become a weakness in this story.

This is a highly realistic spy novel. It lays bare the futility of almost everything that happened in that trade-craft. For the cold war buffs who do not need conclusion-oriented thrills in the books they read, this novel is far better than ratings from normal readers like this reviewer.

Some spoilers

Spying is glamorless but can be deadly.

The time is the 1960s, where the intrigue is focused on the rivalry between two intelligence units. Add to the mix inept planned action in Southern Germany. There is a botched, half-thought-out plan of reconnaissance. Playing hare and hounds and searching for a suitable candidate to dangerous task are in the overriding theme of the book; and almost from the start, you feel matters will not end well.

This is a study of saturnine motivation and jealousy, contemptible disloyalty and weakness in the organs of the intelligence community.Then again, most of all this is a story about the loneliness of a spy. This is a Novel, which is bleak, dark, depressing, with an atmosphere laced with claustrophobic referencing. The mise en scène enhanced by a picture of ugly surroundings and grey weather.

This is not the stuff of 007 or Martinis – but you will be shaken and not stirred.

I really miss the Cold War. Sure, we were continually on the brink of nuclear annihilation, but we possessed a moral certitude totally missing from our current world. We knew who our enemies were, the Soviets and their sympathizers. We could speak out against the Evil Empire and their minions without being labeled a racist, an ethnist, or some other kind of "ist." Despite the moral imperative that drove the governments and their citizenry on both sides of the Iron Curtain, there was a high level of moral ambiguity among those who actually waged the war, the spies sent to ferret out secrets in foreign lands or the clandestine bureaucrats ever caught between the Official Secrets Act and their personal lives. While there were numerous spy fantasies, such as James Bond and all his clones, personifying the righteousness of the Cold War in the middle of the Twentieth Century, there were also many writers who took the path less traveled, who sent their bitter and disillusioned spies into the cold, or brought them out of it, and one of the best being John Le Carre.

Le Carre scored a big hit with "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," probably the first espionage book I read that had a more or less realistic protagonist. He followed it with "The Looking-Glass War," and for those who don't speak the Queen's English, a looking-glass is just a mirror. In the book we get a look at a bit of interdepartmental rivalry between two different factions within Britain's intelligence apparatus. On one side we have the Department, an organization created to fight Nazis, which finds itself out of its depth in the Cold War, but which is seeking some of the glory of old; on the other side, we have Circus, the anti-Soviet espionage group run by spymaster George Smiley, though the Circus rather recedes into the background as the plot progresses.

Since the Department has few of the resources available to the Circus, they are running an operation against what they are sure are secret missile bases. They bribe a commercial airline pilot to stray from his route to photograph the are under suspicion, then send an agent to pick up the film, who promptly gets himself run over in the opening chapters of the book. From there the plot unfolds upon a bureaucrat forced to become a field agent, much to the chagrin of his confused and often caustic wife, to whom he has revealed a bit too much of his work. Also brought into the plot is an East German expatriate sent back to confirm what the lost film may have shown. Ultimately, what the Department proves is that they were really good at fighting Nazis.

Despite the passage of nearly fifty years, "The Looking-Glass War" holds up remarkably well, much better than many other spy books written around the same time. I think that is because Le Carre focuses on characters, their strengths and their foibles, rather than the McGuffin of the plot.

The Looking Glass War (1965), John Le Carré's followup to his breakthrough The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, isn't nearly as dramatic as its predecessor, though a couple of its scenes do approach the level of the best of that work. Following the rather desperate efforts of a second-rate British spy agency, referred to only as "the Department," to stay relevant in the Cold War espionage game, it presents a rather interesting but somewhat overlong study of the bureaucratic will to live on past its expiration date.

The book begins and ends with a bang, but the middle chapters drag as Le Carré time detailing the machinations and maneuverings of Le Clerc, the Department's chief, both to gather the materials and secure and train the agent needed for an assignment behind the Iron Curtain, and to keep his activities hidden from rival agency the Circus, where George Smiley, Le Carré's most prominent recurring character, is deputy chief. Looking Glass War is often promoted as "a George Smiley book," which is technically true but misleading as Smiley plays a minor, though critical, role in the plot (similar to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold).

This book might have been written in a more comic vein, along the lines of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana or John Gardner's Boysie Oakes books, but that's not Le Carré's strength or inclination. As it is, it still much worth reading but a step below his best work such as The Spy Who Came in Fro the Cold.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." -- Lawrence Walsh to J.J. Gittes

I can't help but remember this line every time I read a John Le Carre story. What do any of us know about the intelligence community? We've all been bathed in spy capers in Television, Films, novels and comic books for decades. But what do we really know about the business? Unless you've been given two polygraphs, one for your lifestyle, and one for espionage, you are probably as clueless as I am. But here's the thing, John Le Carre imparts the feeling that you are hearing the truth about MI6, it's problems, it's culture, it's methodologies. He always seems to have the ring of truth. Is it? Because that's the problem, right? What is real, actual information, and what is carefully constructed, packaged and delivered MIS-information? One of the objectives of intelligence gathering is discriminating the correct and accurate facts on the ground. Another is laying red herrings and delivering misinformation to your adversaries, or misleading your competitors. And then there is the task of making others do what you want them to, things they would never choose to do on their own, unless you paved the way for them to an inevitable, inescapable conclusion. I've personally seen situations in the government where one manager knows that someone else's project or initiative is going to fail, and yet they do nothing about it, they even provide encouragement, because failure is the outcome they secretly hope for.

There are ways in which Looking Glass inherits a certain churlish cynicism from The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. And this time, a naif, an innocent, is brought to the moment of truth, and how he has been played, and it's really more than he can bear. Will he continue on his chosen career path? Will he, like David Cornwell, put pen to page and try to tell the world about the treacherous duplicity he has witnessed with his own eyes? Wheels within wheels, the agents of provocation spin their little threads, play their little games. There are winners and losers. The game goes on. And the agents themselves? They can be useful in so many ways, not always how they think, or can even imagine. They can only move forward. How can they know what is truly in the mind of the Chess Master? There is one moment in the story, when the agent who has been specially groomed for this ill-fated mission, is informed that he is going over the border to East Germany, without a gun for self protection. He holds out his cupped hands in a gesture of supplication. "What have I done to make you hate me?" he begs. He is undertaking this dangerous mission because HE hates the East Germans. But why are his officers planning this mission in the first place? And why does MI6 let it proceed? And why are there so many pawns on a Chessboard? Because they are so easily expendable. Pawns are cheap. You sacrifice one, you have plenty more in reserve. It's just the way the game is played. It's nothing personal. It's just how pawns are treated. The Game is always bigger than any individual pawn.

Having recently read Sisman's biography of John le Carre, I had an irresistible urge to revisit his early novels. It is some time since I read "The Looking Glass War" and it was a delight to be immersed once again in the gloom and squalor of le Carre's vividly re-created Cold War. George Smiley has a small part and the depressing duty to clean up after a mission which you know from the beginning should never have been. Memories of British led heroics in WWII are invoked in a desparate effort to restore great power glory to the intelligence mandarins of a country which paid such a price in winning the war, it seems to have lost the peace. This is le Carre's world and his writing remains as compelling as ever. Not his best perhaps, but still a great read.

I really miss the Cold War. Sure, we were continually on the brink of nuclear annihilation, but we possessed a moral certitude totally missing from our current world. We knew who our enemies were, the Soviets and their sympathizers. We could speak out against the Evil Empire and their minions without being labeled a racist, an ethnist, or some other kind of "ist." Despite the moral imperative that drove the governments and their citizenry on both sides of the Iron Curtain, there was a high level of moral ambiguity among those who actually waged the war, the spies sent to ferret out secrets in foreign lands or the clandestine bureaucrats ever caught between the Official Secrets Act and their personal lives. While there were numerous spy fantasies, such as James Bond and all his clones, personifying the righteousness of the Cold War in the middle of the Twentieth Century, there were also many writers who took the path less traveled, who sent their bitter and disillusioned spies into the cold, or brought them out of it, and one of the best being John Le Carre.

Le Carre scored a big hit with "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," probably the first espionage book I read that had a more or less realistic protagonist. He followed it with "The Looking-Glass War," and for those who don't speak the Queen's English, a looking-glass is just a mirror. In the book we get a look at a bit of interdepartmental rivalry between two different factions within Britain's intelligence apparatus. On one side we have the Department, an organization created to fight Nazis, which finds itself out of its depth in the Cold War, but which is seeking some of the glory of old; on the other side, we have Circus, the anti-Soviet espionage group run by spymaster George Smiley, though the Circus rather recedes into the background as the plot progresses.

Since the Department has few of the resources available to the Circus, they are running an operation against what they are sure are secret missile bases. They bribe a commercial airline pilot to stray from his route to photograph the are under suspicion, then send an agent to pick up the film, who promptly gets himself run over in the opening chapters of the book. From there the plot unfolds upon a bureaucrat forced to become a field agent, much to the chagrin of his confused and often caustic wife, to whom he has revealed a bit too much of his work. Also brought into the plot is an East German expatriate sent back to confirm what the lost film may have shown. Ultimately, what the Department proves is that they were really good at fighting Nazis.

Despite the passage of nearly fifty years, "The Looking-Glass War" holds up remarkably well, much better than many other spy books written around the same time. I think that is because Le Carre focuses on characters, their strengths and their foibles, rather than the McGuffin of the plot.

The Looking Glass War (1965), John Le Carré's followup to his breakthrough The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, isn't nearly as dramatic as its predecessor, though a couple of its scenes do approach the level of the best of that work. Following the rather desperate efforts of a second-rate British spy agency, referred to only as "the Department," to stay relevant in the Cold War espionage game, it presents a rather interesting but somewhat overlong study of the bureaucratic will to live on past its expiration date.

The book begins and ends with a bang, but the middle chapters drag as Le Carré time detailing the machinations and maneuverings of Le Clerc, the Department's chief, both to gather the materials and secure and train the agent needed for an assignment behind the Iron Curtain, and to keep his activities hidden from rival agency the Circus, where George Smiley, Le Carré's most prominent recurring character, is deputy chief. Looking Glass War is often promoted as "a George Smiley book," which is technically true but misleading as Smiley plays a minor, though critical, role in the plot (similar to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold).

This book might have been written in a more comic vein, along the lines of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana or John Gardner's Boysie Oakes books, but that's not Le Carré's strength or inclination. As it is, it still much worth reading but a step below his best work such as The Spy Who Came in Fro the Cold.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." -- Lawrence Walsh to J.J. Gittes

I can't help but remember this line every time I read a John Le Carre story. What do any of us know about the intelligence community? We've all been bathed in spy capers in Television, Films, novels and comic books for decades. But what do we really know about the business? Unless you've been given two polygraphs, one for your lifestyle, and one for espionage, you are probably as clueless as I am. But here's the thing, John Le Carre imparts the feeling that you are hearing the truth about MI6, it's problems, it's culture, it's methodologies. He always seems to have the ring of truth. Is it? Because that's the problem, right? What is real, actual information, and what is carefully constructed, packaged and delivered MIS-information? One of the objectives of intelligence gathering is discriminating the correct and accurate facts on the ground. Another is laying red herrings and delivering misinformation to your adversaries, or misleading your competitors. And then there is the task of making others do what you want them to, things they would never choose to do on their own, unless you paved the way for them to an inevitable, inescapable conclusion. I've personally seen situations in the government where one manager knows that someone else's project or initiative is going to fail, and yet they do nothing about it, they even provide encouragement, because failure is the outcome they secretly hope for.

There are ways in which Looking Glass inherits a certain churlish cynicism from The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. And this time, a naif, an innocent, is brought to the moment of truth, and how he has been played, and it's really more than he can bear. Will he continue on his chosen career path? Will he, like David Cornwell, put pen to page and try to tell the world about the treacherous duplicity he has witnessed with his own eyes? Wheels within wheels, the agents of provocation spin their little threads, play their little games. There are winners and losers. The game goes on. And the agents themselves? They can be useful in so many ways, not always how they think, or can even imagine. They can only move forward. How can they know what is truly in the mind of the Chess Master? There is one moment in the story, when the agent who has been specially groomed for this ill-fated mission, is informed that he is going over the border to East Germany, without a gun for self protection. He holds out his cupped hands in a gesture of supplication. "What have I done to make you hate me?" he begs. He is undertaking this dangerous mission because HE hates the East Germans. But why are his officers planning this mission in the first place? And why does MI6 let it proceed? And why are there so many pawns on a Chessboard? Because they are so easily expendable. Pawns are cheap. You sacrifice one, you have plenty more in reserve. It's just the way the game is played. It's nothing personal. It's just how pawns are treated. The Game is always bigger than any individual pawn.

Having recently read Sisman's biography of John le Carre, I had an irresistible urge to revisit his early novels. It is some time since I read "The Looking Glass War" and it was a delight to be immersed once again in the gloom and squalor of le Carre's vividly re-created Cold War. George Smiley has a small part and the depressing duty to clean up after a mission which you know from the beginning should never have been. Memories of British led heroics in WWII are invoked in a desparate effort to restore great power glory to the intelligence mandarins of a country which paid such a price in winning the war, it seems to have lost the peace. This is le Carre's world and his writing remains as compelling as ever. Not his best perhaps, but still a great read.

The following books: The Hunt for Red October, The Spy who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are masterpieces. They had so profound impact on me that I wrote a Cold War novel. But frankly speaking, John le Carre is the first source by which I came to read about espionage.
"Soldiers of Peace" by Vladimir Wilson. Please have a look at this book on the store. I am sure everybody will fall in love with my book. This is not economic but aesthetic in nature. Most importantly, you will know a lot of things from my book. But I welcome suggestions. please mail if you want to suggest me something.

This was so bad we stopped watching halfway through. There was minimal resemblance to the book. Violence and sex were added gratuitously. This film was a far cry from the other beautifully done Le Carré films/mini-series.

I read "Looking Glass War" several years ago and was jolted at how realistic the people and the departments seemed. The tragedy of the story stayed with me for a long time.
Human ambition, the senselessness of bureaucracy and the infighting among goverment departments --- these are some aspects explored here in a 'spy-story' setting. The interactions seemed very real; the bizarreness of the events very much like real life.
Of course this is more of a serious novel than a thriller, as expected of John le Carre. The mood is gray and cluody, and the ending is distressing. The story follows a young employee of an almost-defunct intelligence department. He flies to Scandinavia and finds the local police more savvy than himself. The characters deceive others and themselves in daily-life ways. They prepare to send a poorly-trained man of forty into East Germany as a spy. At the final betrayal, our protagonist cries in anger and shame.
Those reading this book for getting kicks out of following the heroic adventures of a glamorous spy, sent to do the right thing by the right side, will be disappointed. There's no clear distinction between good and bad sides. The enemy people (east germans) are all too human. As in life, much is ambivalent.
This is not an action-packed thriller to make a feel-good hollywood movie from. Rather, it's an excellent addition to human literature, a testament to the tragedies of individuals caught between government institutions of the twentieth century.

Setting mood and tone is something many modern authors spend little time on; in contrast, Le Carre is a master of this style. The books of Le Carre are becoming historical fiction in their approach to setting the specific atmosphere of the Cold War Era with the fear of Russian interference and reprisal. Without the quality of writing of John Le Carre, this might have become a lost era and with it, the fears and apprehensions of the British and Americans towards the Eastern Bloc are vividly manifested in his writings. In this story, the next after his blockbuster "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", Le Carre builds on the fears of a simple inter-agency competition after one receives word that the Russians might be installing a rocket silo in Germany. The Circus, the vaunted organization led by George Smiley has everything. However,another agency, once in glamour, but now nearly torn down twenty years after the war, begins the competition for money, attention, and popularity from the British Government.

This is a simple tale of how a small piece of information that comes into the hands of a broken down directorate of postwar Britain allowed it to turn to fear-mongering and therefore to increase its importance. The difficulty of dealing with an agent's death in a foreign country without the proper personnel in place leads a group of "has-beens" into the foray of British Intelligence. This is a story of three different agents and the washed up agency that is attempting to take this tidbit of information and utilize it to build a rival organization to the Circus. LeCarre is very devious with the way in which the reader is manipulated into wondering whether on not the Circus watches from a distance or is pulling the strings.

Le Carre is superb at providing all of the minor details that can mean the difference between life and death. The training and the insertion of the agent are classic Le Carre. This is not a quick moving story nor is it going to pull most readers into it like a story written by Robert Ludlum. But nowhere are you going to find a better example of what the real spy world was like during this very important time period called the Cold War.

I admit that I was not encouraged by the beginning of this book, but stuck with it because I have been reading Le Carré for a very long time. He is, of course, a master wordcrafter, but it's the set pieces that kept me reading, the tiny details that he included, that remind the reader over and over that Le Carre is ultimately interested in telling, not spy stories per se, but stories about people. The main spy is "a Pole" who has worked for the agency in his youth and now thinks he is British (much to the derision of his recruiters) and asks questions about whether he will ever be allowed to drive a car like the other British agents do. This need to be seen as "one of the club" is of course one of the main reasons this man agrees to the assignment he is given.

There are other things: the small detail of the man who keeps wanting to reach his wife Sarah, much to the annoyance of his colleagues in the agency.

Then, there's a scene in a gentleman's club, in which spycraft is discussed over port and in clubby surroundings, in a totally detached way.

Then, I love the "training sessions", which take place, of all things, in OXFORD, because the constant coming and goings of academics would make it easier for strangers to blend in.

Then, there are all the scenes of training in the use of hand guns, wrestling, and so forth and so on (taking place in this very staid English house in OXFORD, the height of irony), which I don't recall having been touched on in other Le Carré novels. There's even something of a frisson between two men, who when they are wrestling against each other suddenly LOOK each other directly in the face and back off, slightly sheepish. And also, in this book, two male agents do not seem to think it is inappropriate to walk arm in arm through the town of Oxford -- HA HA HA! Try putting that scene in a Bourne movie!

I'm enjoying this book (Disclaimer: I'm only 2/3 of the way through).

As a complete book, "The Looking Glass War" isn't perhaps one of Le Carre's crowning achievements. But in its specific anatomy of the human deterioration, moral depravity and sometimes inhumanness of the cold war it is one of his deepest studies. If "The Spy who came out from the Cold" and "Smiley's People" are symphonies, then this is a tight piece of chamber music. It could have been tighter -- cutting off about a forth of the book would have improved it -- but it offers a hermetic, very troubling experience. It is less about suspense and action and more about relations, morality and compassion. For my part, it is the one book of Le Carre's that remained with me and troubled me the longest. If you liked the more serious aspects of Le Carre's work, then this one will engage you. If you enjoy his work mostly for the action and suspense, however, this one may come on as a little tedious.

Albeit a cameo by Smiley (in one of his least attractive moments), the characters are mostly new. The plot itself is simple: a small, practically defunct British spy agency with a mandate for military targets that has been lagging on aimlessly since WWII, gets one more shot at mounting an intelligence operation. WWII was their best of times, the source of their pride and nostalgia: since then, stripped from financing, backwards on technology, they are no more than a bureaucratic specter. But the gods of warfare reward their zealots, and out of the blue, the agency is offered to retrieve some crucial information about military installations beyond the iron wall (I'll be stingy with details so as not to spoil too much). Everybody wakes up. As they do not have even a single operational agent (nor a radio, weapons, vehicles etc.), they must recruit one, hastily train and employ him; but they need to constantly lie to him, else he might realize how reduced they have become. The relations between the agency's personnel -- the washed-out old hand, the eager young assistant, the ambitious chief -- and the agent, Leiser (codename Mayfly) is what the book is mostly about.

Le Carre, of course, never quite revels to us why Leiser accepts his role (it was mostly a mistake to be heavy-handed about that, as in the subpar "The Night Manager.") Little by little, hints are dropped. A naturalized Pole, dapper, womanizer, Leiser is in fact in desperate need of discipline in his life. An extremely lonely man, the small circle of old-hand spymasters around him supply him with a sense of belonging, friendship, perhaps even love (at a certain point, young Avery realizes that he is being played by his superiors quite as Leiser is. His job is to have Leiser like, possibly love him; and he does.) One of the more pathetic portions of the book is the 48-hours leave that Leiser is granted during his training. While all are certain that this "ladies' man" is having the time of his life, he in fact roams London streets aimlessly, dissipating the time until he can return to the ad-hoc training facility (a house in Oxford rented for one month). What Leiser otherwise wants, is to be thoroughly English. He is insulted to the extent of rage when his colloquialisms are corrected by the jolly but insensitive cockney radio trainer, Johnson. He craves Englishness. It is something I wholly do not understand myself, but Le Carre is effective in convincing us that such a passion exists. It is beyond merely belonging, it is becoming.

So much is Leiser involved in his new life, that his common sense does not reveal to him the amateur nature of the preparations. The radio technology he is expected to use is outdated, cumbersome and easy to intercept; there is no clear plan of action, really, except for getting him in; certainly no one gives serious thought how to get him out. The readers suspect this since a totally mundane assignment that Avery embarked on earlier, which was botched for lack of preparation and professionalism, is praised by his superiors as a success; so utterly afraid of facing their own incompetence they have lost that all-important ability of learning from mistakes.

The Circus, their rival agency where Smiley works, of course realizes this. firmly in the grasp of Control, with Smiley as his lieutenant and sometimes conscience, the Circus observes and keeps its distance (in terms of Le Carre continuity, the story takes place in the mid-sixties, before Smiley's first retirement). However, neither Control nor Smiley will deny the specter team the rope that they require to hang their own agent when everything, of course --

[SPOILER ALERT BEGINS!] --

goes wrong.

There is one point in the book where all of a sudden things turn serious: as Leiser crosses the border (burdened by an old 50-pound radio unit in a suitcase) he quietly and efficiently kills a sentry with a knife. All of a sudden we realize that, his inadequate training notwithstanding, this is a resourceful, dangerous man. This action, however, turns out to be a damning mistake (but why not commit mistakes in contingencies against which he was neither warned nor prepared for?) -- and it is not the last. In fact, in view of the sloppy preparation, Leiser goes much further than one might expect. Still, this is not very far. At that point enters Smiley, gently hinting that the entire operation was redundant, and could and should have been avoided.

This is where Smiley's (as well as the others', save Avery) coldbloodiness plays out: even when it is clear that the operation must be aborted, there is no reason to "play by the war rules" as Lecher "proudly" declares (what a pathetic figure he is reduced to in that scene). For, even if they must relinquish Leiser and abort the operation, they can still give him a head start and a fighting chance to escape. The reason is that the only way that the East-Germans can locate him is through his radio transmissions. Every transmission begins with a brief exchange of identification call signals. At that point, they can signal him to abort transmitting, dump the radio set and attempt to get away. But they don't: when Leiser begins his transmission, there is no one on the other side to receive them. They don't just "disown" him, in Smiley's whitewashed language. They are abandoning him to die when they can still do something for him. He simply doesn't matter anymore, since "we play by the war rules."

[END SPOILER]

This is a book about how people who were once decent and resourceful have deteriorated into coldbloodiness, sheer ambition and becoming all-out technicians who inoculate themselves against the moral implications of their actions. It goes beyond the manipulations that Smiley performs in "The Spy who came out from the Cold." Albeit thin on the action and at times redundant and tedious on the narrative, this is one of Le Carre's most profound studies of the human condition.

"The Looking Glass War," published in 1965, was British spymaster John LeCarre's fourth published novel, coming right after "A Call for the Dead," "A Murder of Quality," and, the big one, "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold." It's thus an early work of the many-times published, now famous Le Carre, but it gives us many themes his work will revisit.

To begin with, it's set, operationally, in the author's German-speaking comfort zone, east of the Berlin wall. It may make the earliest mention of "Belgravia Cockney," an upper-class drawl, favored by the intelligence community, that resembles the lower class's speech; it will reappear in almost every book. It opens with a riveting set piece, and closes with another; the creation of these set pieces is certainly one of Le Carre's great abilities. It shows us some of the author's great spycraft knowledge; his care at weaving complex plots, though this early work's is much thinner than his later ones; his powerful descriptive writing, and ability to envision many interesting characters and give them enjoyable dialogue. It will introduce and reintroduce some of LeCarre's best known characters: George Smiley, Peter Guillam, his lieutenant; even Alec Leamas, who was "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold--" we're told he's dead.

Its plot is set in what will become familiar Le Carre territory. A small British Intelligence agency, whose brief is strictly military matters, suddenly has reason to believe the Russians are placing missiles in East Germany: remember the Cuba missile crisis?

This small agency has been years fighting, and losing, a turf war for power with LeCarre's vaunted circus, the intelligence agency supreme. LeClerq, head of the smaller agency, is no match for the wily Control, nor for his lieutenant Smiley, already introduced in "Call for the Dead," and "Spy Who Came In From The Cold," and destined, as all LeCarre fans know, for an illustrious career.

LeClerc's people have inadequate spycraft, as all frequent LeCarre readers will recognize; they are dependent upon World War II technology. Other men will suffer and die for this agency head's anxiety to aggrandize his agency in its political war with its sister agency. Control and Smiley won't have to do much, either; just withhold a few new toys. So its vintage LeCarre territory: the men in the field are more victimized by fighting Whitehall mandarins than by the enemy. LeClerq will first send in Taylor, a man who's been in overt services all his life and not prepared for the covert side. He'll then suddenly reactivate and send in the unfortunate Polish refugee Fred Leiser, who worked for the agency during World War II: Leiser is much too old for the mission, and woefully underprepared and under-equipped.

About that title: "looking glass" is English-speak for the American mirror. Remember that immortal Marx Brothers' scene: Groucho and Harpo before the mirror-- or is it plain clear glass?

LeCarre has cranked out many spy novels over the years and they're consistently a good read with lots of twists and turns.

If you're a reader of the authors previous books you'll get what you've come to expect which is a great spy vs spy novel. For new readers it should truly be a treat from a classic spy/grilled writer and you'll want to go back and read more. Smiley is a character who you'll want to read more about.

This is another well thought out book that does a good job of combining action and putting us into the mindset and lets us in on the strategic thinking of the characters. The book is immediately engaging and consistently so throughout.

Is it a bit far fetched? Yes, as most books of this type are.

Could it be a bit more original? Maybe.

Is it still really good? Absolutely.

It is a truism that most generals spend their efforts preparing for the last war. The Maginot Line of the 1930s would have been a wonderful defense against the German invasion of 1914. It was completely ineffective in 1939. In Looking Glass, a British military intelligence department left over from WWII, by 1962 a complete dinosaur, sought any project which could justify its continued existence. Having found (it thought) such a project, it guarded it jealously from the enemy, i.e., British political intelligence. It had no active operatives so rerecruited a 40ish WWII agent and retrained him using tapes dubbed from old 78RPM records and gave him an inaccurate map, vague instructions and a 40 lb. WWII radio to lug into East Germany where he killed a border guard,lurched bizarrely about the countryside and sent periodic radio messages, which were naturally intercepted by the East Germans, who were completely mystified until an old sergeant had a light bulb go on in his head and remembered how British spies sent messages on their crystal radios during the war. The novel ends when responsible intelligence people in London awaken to what has been done by the dinosaurs and immediately cut bait to try to preserve deniability of official British involvement. The novel satirizes not only the intelligence bumbling (which I suspect LeCarre had endured) but also the WWII spy novel genre.

Among other things, the description of running an Agent (Fred Leiser) through the Iron Curtain at night remains one of the best I've seen.

On a larger scale, this is a story of the mounting bureaucratic infighting between a military intelligence operation and the emergent power of the "Circus", Control and George Smiley. Like most good LeCarre novels it is also a story of more primal human emotions and their impact, in this case, on espionage operations. Very much worth the read.

This is a actually a beautifully written little story of foolishness, arrogance and betrayal. It's true the plot is a bit thinner than most of this great writer's work, but this tragedy is about the the souls (or lack thereof) of the men who send other men ill-prepared into mortal danger, and their twisted thought processes. Not Le Carre's best work, but darn good.

A marvelous, bitter novel of ad hoc espionage and bureaucratic intrigue--though it dates from the Cold War, its ethical concerns are as timely as ever. The quality of writing throughout far surpasses the requirements of genre and the conclusion retains a spine-chilling power.

A previous review here demands refutation. A so-called "Reader" insists that "Le Carre knows nothing about espionage, foreign affairs, international relations, spy technology etc." "Reader"'s argument? "In the 1960's Czechoslovakia was surrounded by the world's most sophisticated security perimeter.... To Western espionage, however, this iron curtain was easily permeable; high-tech espionage aircraft and satellites routinely overflew Soviet [sic] territory, mapping government installations with a precision far greater than any earth-bound surveyor.... [I]n [Le Carre's] world the Czech border has a chicken-wire fence guarded by local boys with rusty Mannlichers. Aerial spying is carried out by airline pilots, presumably leaning out of their jets to snap a few candids with concealed polaroids!"

A few comments in response:

A) The U-2 spy plane and Corona spy satellite were U.S. programs--Britain's aerial espionage technology lagged well behind in the mid-60's. "Reader" imagines a "Western espionage" monolith that did not exist. While the U.S. and Great Britain were, of course, close allies, their interests were by no means identical and their intelligence agencies were not joined at the hip. "The Looking Glass War"--which, of course, concerns (fictional!) operations by British intelligence--includes passages offering explicit rationale for not immediately involving the U.S., thus necessitating the use of relatively primitive information-gathering techniques.

B) Aside from the political issues "Reader" seems unconscious of, the technology referred to would have been completely irrelevant to the mission described in the latter half of the book--the identification and detailed description of a well-cloaked arsenal of tactical, medium-range rockets (not the large ballistic weapons the U-2 and Corona excelled at sighting)--"what they look like, where they are, and above all who mans them"...that is, precisely the sort of job for which only an "earth-bound surveyor" would do.

C) The suspected rocket site, and thus the critical, climactic action in the book, is located in East Germany. The entire book is concerned with gathering information on and infiltrating East Germany. There is not a single mention of Czechoslovakia in all of "The Looking Glass War." Not one. Did "Reader" even read it?

Don't be dissuaded from reading it yourself.

This work seems to make a mockery of British colonialism, or is it the author's bitterness of his own impotency that gives this book its tone of buffoonery? It is diffucult I suppose to pull off a farce litetarilly speaking and I am scratching my head pondering how seriously to take this book.

I was surprised when I read the negative reviews on this book... I read it several years ago and found it very believeable. Human greed, the senselessness of bureaucracy and the competition between goverment departments... these are some of the very real things that are explored in the book in a 'spy-story' setting. Of course it is more of a serious novel than a thriller... those reading it for getting kicks out of following the heroic adventures of a glamorous spy will be disappointed. The people are human, with real peoples' weaknesses and faults, and the enemy people (east germans) are all too human. I can understand the average thriller fan's not liking this book.

Le Carre says this book is his most realistic spy novel, and perhaps that is why it never achieved success. It is a dry book, but succeeds in communicating the absurdity of the spy profession; the bureaucracy, the petty jealousies and rivalries, the sheer mundane day-to-day dullness, and the cold ruthless calculations that treat the lives of good people as expendable in an endless political game. A solid but subtle work.

This whole book is absolutely pointless. All that happens is the individuals train up a spy to go into Soviet territory and then they leave him. Big Story!! I could write that! To me it is not believable or relevant or anything. Maybe this is the way that it really is or something, but I cannot even believe that, for one simple reason: money. A government cannot waste money like that on risking security breaches, it is just not feasible

While George Smiley only makes a brief appearance in The Looking Glass War it is still a worthwhile book.

The main thrust is an inter-departmental intelligence agency turf war, and also the possibility of Soviet missiles emplacements causing problems for the West Germans.

An old agent is reactivated and sent to look into the problem.

In the 1960's Czechoslovakia was surrounded by the world's most sophisticated security perimeter. Not only were there the usual barbed-wire topped chain-link fences, minefields, guard towers and patrols of the brutal Czech security police, there was actually a DOUBLE border, intended to trap would-be escapees from the grim regime of Communism with an inhuman face.
To Western espionage, however, this iron curtain was easily permeable; high-tech espionage aircraft and satellites routinely overflew Soviet territory, mapping government installations with a precision far greater than any earth-bound surveyor.
This only relates to 'Le Carre' by default; in his world the Czech border has a chicken-wire fence guarded by local boys with rusty Mannlichers. Aerial spying is carried out by airline pilots, presumably leaning out of their jets to snap a few candids with concealed polaroids!
OK, so Le Carre knows nothing about espionage, foreign affairs, international relations, spy technology etc. We're not reading Tom Clancy here! Le Carre's strength is atmosphere, a kind of hopeless despair over human relations and government bureaucracy that any would-be writer can relate to. Le Carre's characters live in a world of illusions, their lives governed by the political infighting of government departments which are far removed from the real world.
I would agree with other reviewers who suggested reading James Bond novels if you want something a little closer to the reality of Cold War espionage. Read Le Carre for his Kafka-esque atmosphere.

During the read I always felt there was something going on among the characters that I could not quite identify.At the end I see the betrayal and deceit that permeated the story comes to fruition. All members of a spy network are expendable even among colleagues and alleged friends.Post WW II spy games in Europe from English activities.

A rather depressing but thought-provoking view of the spy world. Worth thinking about the ego and rivalries that may ultimately lead to failures as sister but competing agencies vie for "scores" and resources. Hopefully, that has improved as today's US agencies cooperate rather than compete.

Well written, boring, depressing. It did not really end but simply stopped, leaving the reader unsatisfied. I suppose the point was to remind us, as if one could forget, of the easy mindlessness common to government employees.

Great author who never used an outline...he would just take a pad of paper and start writing. He'd hand off his pad to his wife and she would edit his work. He chose the nom de plume to have more interesting author name.

The following books: The Hunt for Red October, The Spy who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are masterpieces. They had so profound impact on me that I wrote a Cold War novel. But frankly speaking, John le Carre is the first source by which I came to read about espionage.
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