A Legacy of Spies and Red Notice

A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarré

For fans of "The Spy Who Came in From The Cold", and arch spymaster, George Smiley, this is a return to familiar and much-loved territory. We are again plunged into a world where our intelligence is stretched to the limit by crpytic jargon, non-linear narrative, and jigsaw pieces of truth that scatter as soon as we begin to piece them together. It is modern day and children of victims of "Windfall", a failed covert operation from cold-ward days, intend to sue the British intelligence services for the deaths of their parents. The fall guy is Peter Guillam who is called back from his retirement on a Breton farm and subject to interrogation. All the past files, including those kept by the Stasi, are put before Guillam and Le LeCarré uses this novel as a re-run of "The Spy..." and the hunt for the traitor in British intelligence. It's a very good, page-turning read but, to me does not have a good ending.

Red Notice by Bill Browder

This is the second book about the corruption at the heart of the Russian state that I've read this year. Bill Browder tells the story of how he became involved in making money for investors by buying into new capitalist enterprises, first in Eastern Europe and then in Russia. Just like the first book, "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible" by Peter Pomerantsev, modern Russia is revealed as an alien world to those of us living under democratic systems. Although our society has many ills, we are nowhere near the state controlled gangsterism, corruption of the police and judiciary, or state control of the media and electoral system that prevail in Russia.

The tragic heart of this book is a young Russian lawyer, Sergie Magnitsky, who was beaten to death by eight Russian police officers after exposing the theft of $230 million of taxes by Russian government officials. Eventually this led to the USA passing a Magnitsky Law that enabled the seizing of assets of Russian criminal oligarchs who are using the West to launder the millions made from their nefarious enterprises.

As Lee Child says on the cover of the book, "Reads like a classic thriller..", and I read it it in 5 days.