By John le Carre
1962
160 pgs.
Published by Scribner
John le Carre has seen a second love affair with popular culture, although it hasn't made his name any more of a household one than he'd previously experienced. Always respected as one of the better writers of the British post-war genre writers, his works have started selling again, and a recent flirtation with big-budget Hollywood saw him once making inroads into the American market. While he's never suffered from seeking publication, anyone with an overactive sensory device might remember that it wasn't that long ago that most of his books were being housed in the "mystery/thriller" ghetto of many bookstores, and some still are. It's only been in the last five years or so that he's seen the shift over to "literature," alongside such notaries as "The Devil Wears Prada." With luck, he might go home with some of the people buying whatever piece of paper Dave Eggers recently urinated on.
If said reader decided to go the chronological route, Call for the Dead is going to be where they start; unfortunately, unless they're really dedicated or happened to buy another le Carre, it will also be where they stop. Despite the introduction, which lends one the (probably correct) assumption that Call is based mostly on true experience, the book is such a work of function over form, of a lack of style that while it may be real, it leaves one craving some lies. One of the more non-compelling spy books to ever be referred to as "thriller," Call for the Dead is so grossly dull, full of such hackneyed stereotypes that it's hard to believe it was ever published. It's not just that the book lacks mystery, but that it lacks something far more integral--it lacks anything remotely interesting in the first place. While it certainly wasn't the book that made him a star, and it's notable nor simply due to it's existence, A Call for the Dead is one of the saddest pieces that fill the mystery shelves: a book with far more notoriety (due to it's authors later, justified successes) that's taking up space that belongs to a hundred better writers and a thousand better books.
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