PositiveNew York Journal of BooksAs an aging spy nearing the end of his career, Nat is a character familiar to fans of Le Carré, but it’s quite simply impossible to match the elegant determination and intelligence of George Smiley as a protagonist. We know Nat mostly for his obsession with badminton, his love of his wife Prue, and his typical distrust of senior management. Beyond that, the portrait is a little thin. Secondary characters are likewise somewhat underdone ... Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the novel is its ending, which feels hurried and rather truncated. One can only imagine the author working diligently away on his manuscript until suddenly receiving an email reminding him that his deadline to submit is the day after tomorrow. Time left only to bring things to a tidy close. Readers will be forgiven if they re-read the last 10 pages of the novel to figure out whether they missed something important. Nonetheless, Agent Running in the Field is a pleasure to read. It’s a worthy addition to the John Le Carré canon at a time when bestselling authors don’t always deliver the goods once they reach their 25th novel. No such worries in this case.
