The Night Manager

Here's the deal: I love spies. But I don't like spy novels. I gave Ian Fleming's James Bond a try a couple of years ago, but it just didn't do it for me. However, it was somewhere in October, when I decided to give John Le Carrè's novel The Night Manager a try. Come the beginning of March and with all the schoolwork, I finally managed to read it. 

The Night Manager is a story of an ex-soldier now hotelier, who gets involved with the mistress of an arms dealer after he is given files that serve as good evidence of Richard Roper's dirty business. After a tragic end, he decides to flee and revert into the life of nightly shifts in remote hotels. It is in a hotel in Switzerland when he gets to meet Mr. Roper and his business associates in person, and chooses to risk his life in order to take Roper down once and for all. He goes through an extended journey to create a viable liaison and claim a life of criminal content. The acquired specifications earn him the ability to infiltrate into Roper's world through a carefully planned strategy which is taken too far on his part and earns him an unenviable collection of slow-healing bruises. From then on, he is accepted as part of the team and taken on various dealings.

I must admit that the end of the book had left me in quite a large bubble of split confusion. On one part, I was left disappointed because as an enthusiast of spy stories, I had my expectations too high. On the other hand, after giving it some more thought, l realised it makes a lot of sense and is probably as happy as this story could end.

All in all, spy novels are still a thing I'm taking with caution. John Le Carré's storytelling is very fluid and intriguing, with well developed characters which, as opposed to many other works, are very human with limited capabilities.

What is the last book you read?

 x, Valens