John Le Carre's Call For The Dead

Late last year I went on a little John le Carre run of novels in what is known as the Karla trilogy. It is made up of the stories Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People. While reading those three novels I learned that le Carre's most famous character George Smiley was part of his debut novel, Call for the Dead.

I knew about George Smiley because he is a supporting character in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which I have read previously and seen the film adaptation several times. I had also watched the most recent film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. After finishing the Karla trilogy, I decided to dive into other Smiley adventures and in doing so discovered that Call for the Dead and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold were directly linked.

All this being said, I am now in a run of stories by le Carre and the first was Call for the Dead. It was a very engaging spy thriller, but was a little more of a who-done-it murder mystery than a straight spy story. John le Carre is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, spy novelists of all time, known for his stories being the most realistic, complex, and morally ambiguous. This likely stems from the fact that he worked for both MI5 and MI6.

The Karla trilogy of books is certainly what most readers will point to when thinking of his best works. However, I wasn't entirely hooked by the two later stories in the trilogy. I found Call for the Dead to be much more of a page turner and found myself treating it more like an Agatha Christie mystery than an Ian Fleming spy adventure.

Finding this novel to be so entertaining, I followed it up with a viewing of the film adaptation, titled The Deadly Affair, from 1967 starring James Mason as the George Smiley character, but renamed due to the film rights being owned by a different production company. Unfortunately, the movie didn't quite live up to the book. The changes made didn't enhance the viewing and there was a subplot created around Smiley's wife's infidelity that dragged along. In the book his wife is simply out of the picture, having run off with a new lover. You get references to her throughout the book, but him having to cope with her running around on him isn't actively part of the story.

I very much enjoyed this book and after finishing it wanted to dive right into le Carre's second novel, also featuring Smiley, A Murder of Quality. It should be a quick read if it is at all as interesting as Call for the Dead.

Elmore Leonard's Raylan

We've come to the end of the road for our favorite U.S. marshal, Raylan Givens, at least in literary form. The final novel featuring the lawman who seemed more suited to live in the Old West than current times was aptly named after our hero, Raylan.

Having read the previous stories by author Elmore Leonard, this novel is based solely in the reality of the FX television series and is not a direct follow-up to the previous tales. The biggest sign that this is the case is the fact that, spoiler alert for the short story Fire in the Hole, Boyd Crowder is still alive. It seems the writers or producers of the show liked Walton Goggins so much as Boyd that they kept him alive on the television show. The details of his introduction play out nearly the exact same way as they do in the short story he was featured in, however, the ending changes with him surviving his shootout with Raylan.

I'm not sure when the last novel was written in comparison to what season was taking place, but there were also some slight (and in certain cases major) differences between Raylan and the TV show. The one that comes to mind most easily are two characters by the name of Coover and Dickie. In the novel they are part of the Crowe family and end up dealt with rather quickly in the first few chapters. However, in the show they are part of the Bennett family from season two and their fates are quite different.

Despite these difference and inconsistencies with how the literary Raylan Givens compares to his television counterpart, the novel was interesting. However, many elements of it were repurposed into the series, so it all felt a bit familiar. It was sort of like a mirror episode of Star Trek or being in an alternate Spider-Man universe. Everything was nearly the same, but the inconsistencies were jarring.

I'll be taking a little break from Leonard, but will get back into his novels a little later.

Elmore Leonard's Fire In The Hole & Other Stories

Another week, another Elmore Leonard book. This time it was a collection of short stories that included his two most famous characters, U.S. marshals Raylan Givens and Karen Sisco. I've previously gone over who Raylan Givens is, so I don't need to really touch on that much again. Karen Sisco is from Leonard's novel Out of Sight, which is in line to be read soon. Filmgoers would recognize her as Jennifer Lopez from the film of the same name, which starred George Clooney.

The title story, Fire in the Hole, is the basis of the pilot episode from the TV show Justified. So a lot of it was familiar as I was going through the book. However, all the other stories were new territory, but after reading a couple of Elmore Leonard novels, each character felt familiar and it seemed like they could all be living in the same fictional universe.

This leads me into the final novel about U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. After that I will take a little break from Elmore Leonard, but jump back into his stories later with Out of Sight and City Primeval. I've never kept track of how many books I read in a certain amount of time, but I would never have thought I averaged one book per week.

Elmore Leonard's Riding The Rap

Continuing the tales of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, I read the second novel featuring the character featured in FX's hit show from the 2010s, Justified. I was expecting a completely new group of characters for Raylan to face off against in Riding the Rap and maybe a few cursory references to the previous novel. However, I was taken by surprise to find that this second story was as much of a continuation of Raylan as it was a guy named Harry Arno from the first novel.

This time around, Harry is kidnapped for the money he has been skimming from the bookmaking gig he had for the previous 20 years or so. Raylan takes it upon himself to find Harry at the request of Joyce, who is Harry's ex-girlfriend and Raylan's current girlfriend, further complicating the relationship between the three of them.

Honestly, this one didn't grab me quite like the previous story. It was a completely new tale that had nothing to do with the television show, although there was a brief moment at the very beginning of the story that was utilized for the revival miniseries Justified: City Primeval. This novel was likely realistic in the way that a U.S. marshal actually does track down missing people, as every other chapter spent with Raylan was him going from one location to another and back to the previous location chasing down leads and questioning suspects or friends of suspects. The most interesting part of the book was actually when we spent time with the kidnappers.

Leonard's style of writing is very interesting and I still look forward to the other novels and short stories I'll be reading of his, but so far the dip from Pronto to Riding the Rap was a bit disappointing.

Elmore Leonard's Pronto

A TV show that was beloved by critics and fans alike, including myself, but never seems to be included in lists of the "best" is FX's Justified. The show is considered neo-Western crime noir and is about a U.S. marshal from Kentucky who returns home and has to deal with friends, enemies, and family he thought he'd never see again. Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan Givens, a man who has his own code of justice and would fit better in an Old West boom town rather than the modern world he has to navigate.

Wanting to do a rewatch of the show for several years, but never finding the time to do so, I instead decided to read the source novels from where the character came from. The first of the four books that feature Givens is called Pronto. It follows three characters, Givens, an aged bookie named Harry Arlo, and a mafioso hitman, Jimmy Bucks, also called The Zip. While the story starts and ends in Miami, the middle third of the book has all three characters travel to Italy.

Other than the characteristics of the cowboy marshal who fights by his own rules, the only element of the novel that is carried over to the television show is the showdown between Jimmy Bucks and Givens, which that is featured in the very first episode and is the catalyst to what sends Raylan home to Harlan County, Kentucky.

Elmore Leonard is mostly known for writing Out of Sight, which was made into a feature-length film with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. It is on my list to read after finishing up the Raylan Givens stories. However, he also wrote 3:10 to Yuma, which was turned into a film twice, Get Shorty and its sequel Be Cool, both which featured John Travolta in the film adaptation, and the original story that was turned into Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.

Leonard is acclaimed for his gritty characters and natural-sounding dialogue. Having lived in Detroit, he sets a lot of his stories in that U.S. city, but according to the backstory provided in Pronto, Raylan grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky. He dug in coal mines and eventually got out of that place after serving in the military and then becoming a U.S. marshal.

Having watched the television show first, I can't see anyone else except Timothy Olyphant when I read the story and pictured Raylan conducting his business in either Miami or Italy. It is a role that Olyphant will most likely always be associated with.

The book was entertaining and I liked that it was a story I hadn't already seen during the television run of Justified. Although I knew how the climax was going to end being that it was part of the show, it still was a fun read and I'm looking forward to the next novel in series, Riding the Rap.

R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End

Something a little different with the next book I read. This time it was a three-act play set during the First World War. Similar to the previous book, Passage of Arms, I had at some point been recommended this story, but couldn't remember why. I think it might have been after reading or watching All Quiet on the Western Front, as they are both anti-war pieces displaying the psychological heartbreak of trench warfare.

The story was good, but I do prefer Erich Maria Remarque's German novel. What I found more interesting than the actual play itself was that Laurence Olivier starred in the first performance of the show in London's Apollo Theater. Olivier is a tremendous actor of Hollywood's Golden Age and to see him in a theater production would have been stupendous. I can picture him in the role of Captain Stanhope and I'm sure he was phenomenal, as he is in nearly everything he did.

There have been revival productions of Journey's End and even some film, television, and radio adaptations throughout the years. It took me only a day to read through the entire thing and the copy I received had notes written throughout by someone who was either studying it for school or performing it as a play. If you want to be reminded of the horrors of war, then by all means go ahead and spend a couple of hours going through this. However, I would still recommend All Quiet on the Western Front as a more insightful look into what the men of World War One went through and how it took a toll on those young men.

Eric Ambler's Passage Of Arms

I have a list of books I am always interested in reading if I can find them at one of my local Half Price Book stores, however, sometimes certain titles get pushed to the back of the line and don't get read for several months or years. And when that happens, the reason for my interest in that particular story can become lost to time. That is definitely the case with Eric Ambler's novel Passage of Arms.

At some point in the past it was suggested in an article or some other area of influence that Ambler's novel about arms dealing in southeast Asia would be a good read. I honestly can't remember why I felt this book would be interesting or in my wheelhouse of interest, but I have to say that I ultimately was not let down.

The little information I do know about Eric Ambler is that he generally wrote thrillers, and more specifically, spy stories. However, his protagonists were rarely professional spies. In Passage of Arms, the story has several characters involved in the selling of a cache of weapons and ammunition, however, the group we are with the most is an American husband and wife who are on holiday and get wrapped up in the scheme.

I had no expectations going into this novel and knew nothing about it other than the author's name. Coming out I was pleasantly surprised and found the story to be engaging, precise, and overall thrilling, despite it being a slow burn of a story. We start and end with an Indian servant, but the story expands as it goes along the line of people who become involved in the selling of the weapons. To modern audiences who expect a thriller to constantly reveal new mysteries and every chapter to end on a cliffhanger, this novel is not for you. However, if you want varied and realistic characters who provide relatable motivations and morally grey incentives, then I cannot recommend this more. Since nearly every character throughout is dealing directly with the arms deal, there isn't really a good guy to be rooting for. Yet, no person represented is a black-or-white type of character. There are sensible motives provided for everyone and it becomes understandable as to how each character is involved in the plot of the story.

I'm still not sure how Passage of Arms got onto my radar, but I'm glad it did. I would recommend taking the time to check it out. It is a short novel and not a huge investment of time.