Cynthia Haggard's Reviews > The Looking Glass War

Although this novel is a masterpiece, it is not something you want to read unless you can handle something very dark.

Apparently John Le Carré was taken aback by the positive reception to his previous novel, The Spy that Came in from the Cold. He was dismayed that so many of his readers were devouring his in the mistaken belief that the Life of a Spy is glamorous and sexy. And so The Looking Glass War is his attempt to set the record straight, portraying a spy agency as morally bankrupt and incompetent.) (Which raises an interesting question ~ how on earth did he get this novel past the censors?)

In the early 1960s, British Intelligence is trying to get a beat on what is going on in East Germany. In particular, they are interested in whether the USSR is sending its soldiers into East Germany for training purposes, and if so, what matérial they are using in the shape of guns, tanks and other instruments of warfare.

And so they send Taylor to Berlin. This spy travels alone into dangerous territory, gets drunk at a bar while waiting for a commercial plane to arrive (it is late because it is doing a spot of surveillance for the British) and then, as he walks alone through a snowstorm to get to his lodgings and begin his work, he gets mown down by a car. Of course he leaves a wife and a young child. But Control (the chief spy) and The Circus (the spy agency, probably MI6) don’t seem interested in trying to find out who murdered him and why.

Avery is next. HIs task is to retrieve the photos of the surveillance and bring the body home. Pretending to be Taylor’s half-brother, his act is so unconvincing that the person in charge of releasing Taylor’s body laughs at him. The only good thing that happens to emerge from this disastrous mess is that Avery manages to return home to his wife and child. But the photos have disappeared. And Taylor’s body has to be rescued by Control because Avery had the wrong passport.

Then there is Fred Leiser, a Polish immigrant, who supposedly was a top-notch sender and receiver of morse code messages during the Second World War, which ended 20 years prior to the date of this novel. Wouldn’t it be just the ticket, think the heads of the spy agency, to send him to Berlin to continue Taylor’s work? But Leiser (his name sounds exactly like Liza, which gives him a confusing feminine identity if you are experiencing this as an audio book), is all-too-happy to help this mismatched bunch of mostly middle-aged men, who drink far too much and breathtakingly careless with other people’s lives.

Despite his reputation, Fred Leiser is incompetent from the word go. He can’t fire his pistol properly. He gets mixed up when instructed to do something. And his morse code work is far too slow. Nevertheless, LeClerc and the others in charge tell him he is doing excellent stuff and that he is the best to do the job.

Of course, it all ends in heartbreaking disaster. Of course Leiser is caught. Of course he is going to be tried and executed. Meanwhile LeClerc, Avery and the rest of the spy agency bolt back to England, leaving Leiser to face the executioner, while they clap each other on the back for the supposedly terrific work they’ve done. And then, they pass the port.