This is the equivalent of sitting down in an Irish pub to a rich stew of lamb, carrots, and onions, a side of soda bread, and a pint or two of Guiness. Your friends have joined you and are telling a story that will last for hours. Cal Reddy, a retired American cop, has retired to the composite small town of Adnakelty. He is helping to raise Trey Reddy, a fifteen-year-old semi-feral girl from up the mountain now that her older brother has mysteriously disappeared, probably under BAD circumstances.Trey’s single mom is barely staying afloat caring for her gaggle of kids when Johnny Reddy, her always-ready-with-a-scheme-good-for-nothing-husband, gone for four years, inexplicably reappears. 

Day-by-day Johnny’s duplicitous enterprise is unveiled and the small community of sheep farmers who have known one another for a lifetime must decide how to respond. They gather in the town pub and thrash out their motivations while telling stories, repeating old insults and practical jokes. Inexorably, Johnny’s plan grows darker, townsfolk are divided, feud-like, Trey is caught in a vicious struggle between her real father, Johnny, and a decent father, Cal, and the effects of a once-in-a long while drought withers townsfolk, leas, and sheep to the point of bottomless irritation.

Nat, a middle-aged British spy, is called home from his duties running agents on the continent of Europe. Reunited with his wife Prue and about to be put out to pasture by the agency, Nat is at loose ends when he is befriended by Ed Shanahan. Ed is young, idealistic, and seeks out Nat at his club in order to challenge Nat, the club’s reigning badminton champ.

Adding to Nat’s malaise and reinforced by Ed’s tirades, Britain is careening toward Brexit and America is reeling under Trump’s anti-Europeanism. Nat and Ed, serving as spokesmen for LeCarre, the aged Europeanist,let loose on the state of affairs. Britain’s foreign secretary is described as a “fucking Etonian narcissistic elitist without a decent conviction in his body bar his own advancement”. Trump is “Putin’s shithouse cleaner.”

In vintage LeCarre, agents cross, double cross, and triple cross one another. Ascribing veracity is a agent runner’s most difficult task. The agencies that run spies (German, Russian, British) are all bureaucratic hell-holes. Can Nat sort out one more case of covert actions that threaten to undermine Europe’s post Cold War alliances? If you have a chance to listen, LeCarre is an expert reader of his own audiobooks. Published when LeCarre was 88-years-old, this was his last book.