OUR KIND OF TRAITOR PB – JOHN LE CARRE

In John le Carre s electrifying novel Our Kind of Traitor, innocents abroad are drawn into the darkest recesses of the financial world. Britain is in the depths of recession. A left-leaning young Oxford academic and his barrister girlfriend take an off-peak holiday on the Caribbean island of Antigua. By seeming chance they bump into a Russian millionaire called Dima who owns a peninsula and a diamond-encrusted gold watch. He also has a tattoo on his right thumb, and wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the young lovers on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps, to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain s Intelligence Establishment. If you want to know about the state of Britain today, forget the Booker shortlist. Just read John le Carre s latest thriller Evening Standard Few recent plays have had dialogue as good, and few recent literary novels can boast a set of characters so vividly imagined. Our Kind of Traitor is a teasing, beguiling, masterly performance Sunday Times