A Most Wanted Man

By: John le Carre

Narrated by: Roger Rees

Now a major film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, and Robin Wright.

From John le Carré, this New York Times bestselling spy thriller is his “strongest, most powerful novel” (The New York Times Book Review).

A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa.

Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client’s survival becomes more important to her than her own career—or safety. In pursuit of Issa’s mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Frères, a failing British bank based in Hamburg.

Annabel, Issa, and Brue form an unlikely alliance—and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, sensing a sure kill in the War on Terror, the rival spies of Germany, England, and America converge upon the innocents.

Thrilling, compassionate, with characters you’ll never forget, A Most Wanted Man is a work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times.

Good Le Carre, nothing extraordinary

This is a very zippy tale with many of Le Carre's common themes: the misguided hippie girl, the wise older spy who's so much better than his bureaucratic superiors, the heavy-handed idiocy of American foreign policy. There's not much more than that, but as always it's well done and all characters are expertly drawn. A Perfect Spy and Absolute Friends are better novels for me that go farther than this, but you can't go wrong with this author.

The Latest from John le Carr?

His latest is A Most Wanted Man, and it is up to his usual standards. The enemy now are Islamic radicals, but the operators portrayed here are probably innocent. The man in the middle is trying to develop them as leads into a terrorist network - resources that are badly needed. But he is opposed by those who not interested in anything so subtle - they want to arrest them, using dubious means, and torture them: mainly American operatives.

Complex and thought-provoking

My favorite Le Carre book and fantastically narrated. As relevant today as when it was written nearly twenty years ago

Good story

If you could sum up A Most Wanted Man in three words, what would they be?

Engaging, smart, and modern

What did you like best about this story?

I thought this was a well developed and believable story. The plot was in keeping with current events.

Which scene was your favorite?

Many of the scenes were interesting, from the beginning when Issa arrives in Hamburg to the very end when government interests collide.

Very engaging story

If you like Le Carrie’s writing style then you will like this book. The story is engaging and less complex than many of his stories, with a timeline that is mostly linear. In typical Le Carre fashion, the character development is robust to the point that I think I would recognize any of them if I met them on the street. The accents are a bit confusing at first but you get used to it as the story progresses. The challenge is that in the story, very little of the dialog is in English so the accent is used to imply that the conversation is being conducted in German or Russian. After getting used to that, I think it works well to convey the storyline. Le Carre’s descriptions of the places in the story are very detailed making you fell like you are standing in the room listening to the scene as it unfolds, and feeling the stress and discomfort that the characters are feeling. I found the end of the story to be very abrupt, as if Le Carre had run out of paper or was faced with a deadline. After a very carefully developed story, the end seems to come as an unanticipated guillotine to the story, leaving several loose ends to be tied up by the reader. But aside from that, I found the audio book enjoyable and entertaining and would recommend it for a listening choice.