A DELICATE TRUTH: A NOVEL

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Product Description From the New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies. John le Carré’s new novel, Agent Running in the Field, is coming October 2019. "A novel that beckons us beyond any and all expectations."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post A counter-terrorist operation, code-named Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar.  Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be—or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher “Kit” Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’s daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent? Review “At the moment a new generation is stumbling upon his work, le Carré is still writing at something close to the top of his game…. [ A Delicate Truth] is an elegant yet embittered indictment of extraordinary rendition, American right-wing evangelical excess and the corporatization of warfare. It has a gently flickering love story and jangling ending. And le Carré has not lost his ability to sketch, in a line or two, an entire character.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Magazine (front page) “The narrative dominoes fall with masterly precision....As ever, le Carré’s prose is fluid, carrying the reader toward an inevitable yet nail-biting climax.”—Olen Steinhauer, The New York Times Book Review “Timelier than ever.”— The New York Times   “Well-wrought….A sharply sketched gallery of characters.”— The Wall Street Journal   “Le Carré is fiercely modern…a confluence of styles, voices, approaches….A novel that beckons us beyond any and all expectations.”— Washington Post “[L]e Carré is...at full power with a book that draws on a career’s worth of literary skill and international analysis. No other writer has charted—pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers—the public and secret histories of his times.”— The Guardian (UK)   “Gorgeous writing. It’s sophisticated storytelling at its very best.”— USA Today   “A ripping, fun yarn.”— Entertainment Weekly   “Loyalty to the crown is tested; consciences are checked; and nothing is more terrifying than, as this novel’s protagonist puts it, ‘a solitary decider’ asking himself how on earth he talked himself into this mess.”— The Daily Beast   “A remarkably assured touch…. [Le Carré] has maintained full control of his prodigious literary talents.”— SF Gate “The dirty deeds are brutal and crude. And so is the cover-up.”— The Huffington Post   “Heady and absorbing....John le Carré remains in full command of both the craft of writing and the art of espionage.”— Christian Science Monitor   “Le Carré further establishes himself as a master of a new, shockingly realistic kind of noir.”— Booklist (Starred) “This is a guaranteed hair-raising cerebral fright, especially for anyone who enjoyed Robert Harris’s The Ghost or who just knows his or her email account has been hacked.”— Library Journal (Starred) “Le Carré focuses on the moral rot and creeping terror barely concealed by the affable old-boy blather that marks the pillars of the intelligence community.”— Kirkus Reviews (Starred) “A great story in sterling prose.”— Publishers Weekly “Le Carré proves himself a master of character development.”— The Millions   “Another breathtakingly good work…. [the] story hurtles along with the speed of light.”— Newsday “