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I'm going through a period of my life right now where, anytime I read an article about a book series that I find even mildly interesting, the first thing I'll do is stop by The Pirate Bay to see if the series is being offered as a torrent, and if so will then download the entire series to my Kindle with the aim of reading at least a few of the volumes, just to see if it's worth finishing the entire thing. That's how, for example, I've ended up with all 24 novels of David Cornwell, better known by his pen-name "John le Carre," although admittedly I was already a fan because of seeing a series of high-profile movies before ever reading any of his books.

His first two novels, which only did so-so commercially, are considered by most to actually be murder mysteries that just happen to be set among spies, not "spy novels" unto themselves; so I decided instead to start with his third book, 1963's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which by surprise became a huge international bestseller when it first came out, and has since been named by many organizations as one of the 100 best thrillers ever written. And I have to say, it's ridiculously easy to see why once you read it; featuring one of the most clever plots I've ever seen, it balances this jigsaw puzzle against what is a shockingly downbeat and pessimistic attitude about spy agencies in general, all the more amazing when you realize that le Carre was an active agent in Britain's MI6 when he wrote it (hence the pen-name, since intelligence agents aren't allowed to publish under their real names when active), which fed into a Mid-Century Modernist society's mania at the time for books that both praised their age's cleverness and made witheringly cynical observations about that cleverness.

In fact, once you get done with this mesmerizing story, you'll find it hard to believe that Ian Fleming's James Bond stories were taking place at the same time, and that the characters in both series are supposed to somehow exist in the same universe and work at the same place. And that's because, as le Carre's career continued, he became especially known for novels that show the dreary, bureaucratic side of intelligence gathering, essentially painting MI6, the KGB, the CIA and others as inept Dilbert-like corporations, run by incompetent morons who barely know what they're doing; while as Fleming's career continued, his series hero James Bond became more and more like a cartoon character, an impossibly suave superhero who bedded every woman he met, relied on a series of futuristic gadgets, and whose antagonists quickly left the realm of the Cold War to become cackling supervillain masterminds in their own right.

But if you look at early Fleming at his most realistic, and compare him to early le Carre at his most outrageous (precisely in books like this one), you can actually see how they might be seen as two sides of the same coin by audiences in the early '60s; for while Cold's hero Alec Leamas might not be jumping off any cliffs or shooting anyone with a gun hidden in his watch, certainly he pulls off a deception here that verges on superhuman, purposely wrecking his life, bankrupting his finances, and becoming a semi-real alcoholic, only so that the Soviets will legitimately believe it and think him ripe for recruiting as a paid blabber of MI6's secrets. And all this is done, meanwhile, only for the purpose of implanting a single suspicious idea in the mind of the number-two in charge of East Germany's spy organization, an idea that Leamas and MI6 can only hope will hatch and fester into a diabolical plan in the number-two's mind to assassinate his number-one boss, which was the real purpose of this secret, secret, top-freaking-secret operation all along.

It's the twisted machinations of this plot that makes the book so thrilling and readable; but what's surprising, and what elevates this novel way above the other spy literature of the time, is le Carre's ruminations on what kinds of dysfunctions makes a human being want to be a spy in the first place. And in this, he makes a convincing argument that spies in democratic countries are actually way more mentally unhealthy than Communist spies, one of the main points of frisson in this narrative that makes the novel such a dark delight; after all, Communists at least have the purity of their philosophy to fall back on, a True Believer's righteousness about the glory of the state and the inevitability of history to propel them into the human-rights abuses they commit on a daily basis as part of their jobs. (And if this philosophy fails them, they still at least have raw ambition and the corrupt careerism of a dog-eat-dog Communist governmental apparatus to drive their actions.) But the posh gentlemen of MI6 are out there raping women and killing babies every day too; and if it's not love of country or belief in a Christian God that compels them (two subjects Leamas openly laughs at in the book, when his Communist interrogator suggests them as MI6 motivators), and if you can't "murder your way to the top" like was possible in the Soviet government, then what exactly does motivate British spies to behave in such horrific ways on a daily basis?

The answer -- or more precisely, the lack of an answer -- is one of the most fascinating points le Carre has to make here, a point he would expand on in later books like an open sore that has grown through neglect into an abscess; but it's all on display right here at the beginning of his career too, the thoughts of a man who was clearly unhappy at his place of work (to put it mildly), and who hastily quit MI6 the exact moment that his writing could instead pay his bills. In fact, the only regret I have here is learning that the plot in Cold directly hinges on events that took place in those first two books I initially skipped over, including the fact that those books introduce the famed George Smiley who would become le Carre's go-to antihero for half a dozen of his most famous early books; so I've decided to backtrack at this point and take on those two earliest books next, just so I'll be completely up to speed with what's going on. (Also, potential series-readers, take note -- the events here in Cold directly form the basis for the plot of le Carre's most famous Smiley book, 1974's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so you would be wise not to skip around at all.) I think I'm in for the long haul when it comes to le Carre, so be sure to stop by my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ account regularly for the latest reviews.