What a treat it turns out to be to wander anew the fusty, crumbling warren of the Circus ... The prose of Karla’s Choice is not an absolutely perfect exercise in ventriloquism of the master, nor does it try to be. There may be a few seeming anachronisms...but there is a satisfyingly cold tone throughout, recalling the way that le Carré’s own furiously tamped-down moralism (in the novels of the 1960s and 70s, at least) could approach nihilism ... He demonstrates superbly, too, how suspense can arise from the patient accumulation of detail, and the brilliant climactic scene is nothing so vulgar as an action-movie shootout but rather a sequence of ordinary bureaucratic peril: the attempt to cross a border when one’s papers are not quite in order.
Though peppered with good things and tightly written vignettes, leaves you with an odd feeling of dutifulness shading, at times, into outright constraint.
Harkaway writes with great worldliness and dash, and his sense of tradecraft is impressively convincing ... Tightly and cleverly plotted, but as the car chases accelerate and we race toward a propulsive conclusion, we’re reminded that le Carré’s books were never about the action ... Gripping and expert, clearly the work of a professional, but the one thing it’s not—and never could be, alas—is a John le Carré novel.
Harkaway has given us the familiar. He falls short of the stylistic eloquence, complex insights and wry wit of his father. But for the most part he offers a credible imitation of Smiley ... All a bit much.
The closeness, in these words and in the careful and creative loyalty of Karla’s Choice to an old world, may invite us to think not of judgments but of real and imaginary beings caught up in corporate rot. What if the accusation of rot is wrong?
Harkaway demonstrates his ability as a wordsmith in the book, as evidenced by this passage, which lyrically describes one of the few incidents of violence ... An engaging, compelling spy novel.
Harkaway faithfully reproduces his father’s rhythms at the level of sentence and plot alike, with slow-burn tension giving way to agonising jeopardy as cat-and-mouse games explode into crunching hand-to-hand combat or street gun battles. There’s a grippingly cinematic escape scene set in Budapest ... A loving tribute to a complicated father...as well as an excellent novel in its own right, and only the first of a new series, at least to judge from a broad hint dropped in the end matter. I can’t wait.
May be best suited for fans of le Carré or vintage espionage thrillers ... Harkaway mimics the tone of le Carré’s novels, which after 80 years may feel opaque and ponderous to newcomers ... A worthy and elevated addition to le Carré’s series.
