After 50 years in the spy business, John le Carré is now over 80 - and there can't be many more novels to come, so all the more reason to relish this, his latest. I'm late catching up because there was a long, long waiting list in the library.
I've read all of them, bar one or two, and he is back on masterly form in a world where the war against terror has been contracted out to mercenaries. A decent, old-fashioned Foreign Office low-flier, coming up to retirement, believes ingenuously that his participation as the British observer of an illegal American counter terrorist op on Gibraltar is the glorious swan song of his insignificant career. Three years on, it emerges that it was a tragic, venal cock-up ... but in this brave new world, men of conscience are impotent against government corruption.
Cynical, horribly persuasive, bang up to date and completely gripping.