Book description
Magnus Pym, lifetime secret agent and presently counsellor for
certain unmentionable matters at the British Embassy in Vienna, is
missing, believed defected.
Rick Pym, father to Magnus, founder and managing director of
numberless defunct companies, self-styled Colonel, fantasist and
confidence trickster extraordinary, has finally died in the arms of
two whores. It is while Magnus is in England to bury Rick that he
elects to disappear. Taking his secrets with him, he goes to ground in
the Devon boarding house of the ancient and motherly Miss Dubber that
has long been his secret hiding-place.
The chase is on: for a missing person, for the truth about a charming
man. It is conducted by Pym himself as well as by his pursuers. While
Pym in a desperate confession to his son recounts his quest for love
and faith, and his first steps in deception, his pursuers unearth a
trail of duplicity.
In this most beguiling of spy stores, John le Carré guides us
effortlessly through fifty years of alternative Britain, introducing
us along the way to a hilarious company of ambulance chasers, war
racketeers, shady lawyers, property sharks, lovelies and fixers; and
then to Occupied Austria, to Czechoslovakia, Berlin, and finally to
the goal of every ambitious traitor of our time - America.
Blending wit and compassion with unflagging tension, le Carré sweeps
us into a secret universe in which his essentially innocent hero
strives to reconcile the conflicting elements of his very English
heritage.
