The review that I wrote yesterday reminded me about another book that I recently finished, The Mission Song, by John LeCarré. By chance, I finished the book a couple of days after watching the perplexingly mediocre new Bond installment, Quantum of Solace.
I was really intrigued by the new directions that these two franchises have taken with this new century. Le Carré was the prototypical Cold War spy novelist. James Bond was the over-the-top secret agent obsessed with his nemesis, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. And yet the Cold War is over. Teenagers today were barely alive during the fall of the Wall, and it will be many years yet before people will begin to read Cold War novels as historical fiction. Where then do writers go when they have built their entire careers on books that are factually and fashionably out of favor?
hammer & jack 