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Showing posts from February, 2012

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre

A good read with all the classic features of a Le Carre novel - characters trying to salvage themselves and their failed lives over something they eventually would have no control of. Brue took a slow tour around the room Why, on earth did you do it dear father of mine? Why, when all your life you traded on your good name and that of your forebears and lived by it in private and in public, in the higher traditions of Scottish caution, canniness and dependability: why put all that at risk for the sake of a bunch of crooks and carpetbaggers from the East whose one achievement had been to plunder their country's assets at the moment when it had most need of them? Why throw open you bank to them? -  your beloved bank, your most precious thing? Why offer safe haven to their ill-gained loot, along with unprecedented terms of secrecy and protection? Why stretch every norm and regulation to its snapping-point and beyond, in a desperate - and as Brue had perceived it, even at that t