Books

Today was fairly busy at work because we had to put all the stuff on our desks into large plastic boxes in preperation for the desk move over the weekend. It's amazing how much stuff accumulates in the ten months since the last move.

I finished reading a book called The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre. The book was first published in 1977, and forms the second part of le Carre's "Quest for Karla" trilogy. Opening shortly after the end of the previous book (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy), the British Secret Service (nicknamed "The Circus") is in complete disarray due to the activities of a Soviet double-agent, and George Smiley, who has been promoted to the head of the Service, is increasingly obsessed with tracking down his arch-enemy, the Soviet spymaster codenamed Karla. Smiley learns about a money-laundering and drug-smuggling operation being run out of Hong Kong, which he believes is providing secret funds for Karla, and decides to investigate. he sends out journalist and sometime secret agent Jerry Westerby (nicknamed "The Honourable Schoolboy" due to his aristocratic background), and who has a lot of knowledge and contacts in the Far East. While Smiley and company become increasingly involved in inter-office rivalries and diplomatic squabbles in London, Westerby finds himself dodging spies and gangsters in Hong Kong, and bullets in war-torn Cambodia, as he finds himself in increasing danger from both sides. Whereas the first of the books is quite sedate, this one has a fair amount of action and adventure, and it's globe-trotting plot provides plenty of exotic backdrop. The first book was turned into a hugely successful television mini-series by the BBC, but they decided against adapting Honourable Schoolboy, due to the cost involved in making a televison series set mainly in the Far East as well as the fact that the series central character, George Smiley, has a much smaller role in this one, and so they instead adapted the final book in the series, Smiley's People.