Adam Mars-Jones
SINGLE & SINGLE by John le Carr (Hodder &Stoughton)
There have been a dozen books since The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and still John le Carr seems like a butterfly escaped from the chrysalis of the genre novel but afraid to spread his wings, more than half regretting the old constricted certainties. His new novel is lightly researched and well plotted, but a little sombre for those who want escapist action, and a little formulaic for more demanding readers.
Tiger Single is a London-based venture capitalist who profits from the opportunities and the temptations offered by the melting of the Soviet bloc. He becomes involved in more and more ambitious projects, the first one being to take blood given freely in Russia and transport it for sale in America.
The attempted coup of 1991 puts paid to this bit of visionary plasma-broking, and afterwards Tiger Single is drawn into the more humdrum viciousness of the drug trade.
The other Single of the title is his son and business partner Oliver, who, before the action of the book begins, has already told customs everything he knows, and is living under another name in a seaside town. As Tiger’s empire in its turn begins to unravel, Oliver is drawn back into its workings, looking for his father to bring him to justice and also, whether he knows it or not, to ask for forgiveness.
The theme of blood for sale may be superseded in plot terms, but it doesn’t lose its wider resonance. What, after all, is Oliver doing by blowing the whistle on his father except shopping his own flesh and blood? Oliver was Tiger’s one weak point, the son he wanted to impress and seduce, not merely control. He gave Oliver enough rope to hang not himself but his father.
Le Carr’s approach has been to strip away the spurious excitement from the world of spies and agents, revealing it to be a labyrinth of bureaucratic betrayals in which most covert activity amounts to playing chess in a deep freeze in the dark, and then to invest that with a certain stoical romanticism. He reveals the tarnish and then gives it just a little gloss. In this combination of cynicism and a muted idealism, he resembles a more consistent stylist, Raymond Chandler.
It comes as a shock to the reader when Oliver visits his mother, since he had shown no previous sign of having such a thing. There’s no more preparation for pyschological disclosures.
Oliver falls in love with “a pebble-chinned girl with broad, clear eyes and a scruffy blonde mane”. Le Carr can write convincing accounts of the Byzantine workings of money- laundering and can convey how it would feel to be lost in Tbilisi, but he can’t make this romance seem anything but wishful thinking.