Spies: Red Sparrow

Although I am a great fan of spy movies, Harry Palmer and Jason Bourne come quickly to mind, and all of those James Bond epics, which are really a genre of their own,  I'm not really a reader of spy thrillers. There are notable exceptions: I've read and enjoyed several of John Le Carre's novels, and I was impressed by James Grady's Six Days of the Condor, later made into one of my all time favorite films, Three Days of the Condor -- obviously the book was longer. But generally I don't read spy fiction. So I was not surprised when I found myself growing weary of Jason Matthews' Red Sparrow, the most recent of my Men's Book Club selections.

The book is well written. The settings are fascinating, Moscow, Helsinki, Washington, Rome, and other exotic places. The characters are interesting and complicated, their motives complex. The plot is convoluted and certainly fast paced. It will probably make a good movie, which I understand is already in the works. And for those who enjoy cooking, there are recipes of the most important meal at the end of every chapter. (I haven't actually tried making any of them yet, they are a little skimpy on amounts of ingredients, but they are certainly tempting and sound like they would be delicious from Matthews' descriptions of the meals.) In this book the characters enjoy both cooking and dining. But as the story moved toward its inevitable pause (there was already a sequel in the works), I realized I was losing interest.

Why was that? I suspect it has something to do with a subject that Le Carre handles so well: the growing realization that none of this really matters very much except to those unfortunate enough to have been caught up in the game of spying and stealing so-called state secrets, the most valuable of which is knowing who is spying for whom. The lavish attention Matthews gives to the "tradecraft" of spying reveals his love for the game, but at the same time there is the growing sense that while the stakes are high for the characters, the world has moved on. In an age of high tech espionage, ubiquitous CCTV surveillance, and computer hacking, how much longer will old fashioned tradecraft matter? Of course, deception will never go out of fashion, and those who lie for a living will always have gainful employment. But somehow I just can't seem to sustain interest in these stories in books as well as I can on the screen. I think the faster pace of the movies tends to elide some of the inconsistencies that emerge in reading.

In an age that is rapidly experiencing an end to privacy for everyone, when secrets, even state secrets, are regularly published online, perhaps elaborate fictions about the maintaining and the breaking of secrets and codes is a form of nostalgia. Once again I recall that wonderful line from John Houseman's character in Three Days of the Condor: "I miss the clarity."