A Delicate Truth, John LeCarre
A week or two ago I finished John LeCarre’s “A Delicate Truth.” LeCarre is always very current in his writing, and sets his books in the present day focusing on issues that matter now. He typically writes about the military and politics. For those who don’t know, LeCarre is a great British writer who wrote “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” back in the 1950s. He has been writing for over five decades, and is one of the greatest, and most prolific, English writers.
I liked the political intrigue of this book, and how it highlighted the incompetence of the private security industry. We have all bought in to this great security mystique since 9/11. Think about how private security affects your life, what we’ve gotten used to, and the kind of people (for the most part) in the private security industry, who need a uniform or a gun to feel better about themselves. It seems to attract a certain kind of person as well, a person who wears a uniform so they can have authority to tell people what to do. Anybody who wants to contribute to the security of the world would be thinking about how to stop these security breaches from happening in the first place rather than scaring people in to thinking they need them to be safe.
“Delicate Truth” is funny, sad, frightening and ultimately, very good.