The Night Manager

Jonathan Pine, a night manager for a luxury hotel, receives sensitive documents from a woman. He promises to handle her documents discreetly, but instead, the former soldier turns the papers on arms trade over to British intelligence. 

Pine falls for the woman whose life is endangered by his handling of the papers.

Soon, Pine is recruited to not only go undercover but to disguise himself as a fugitive wanted for murder along the way. His assignment is to become part of the arms network ran by Richard Onslow Roper. 

Roper is at turns charming and brutish, with no clear line between the two. He is dangerous and apparently untouchable. Pine’s mission is to pull Roper’s teeth and leave him vulnerable for prosecution.

Though haunted by one doomed woman, Pine falls for another trapped woman – Roper’s companion.

John Le Carre is at his best with “The Night Manager.”

Published in the early 1990s, the book came out in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the American-led coalition to liberate Kuwait from Iraq. 

Le Carre had established himself in the preceding decades as the master of the Cold War spy novel with books such as “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “The Russia House,” etc.

“The Night Manager” proved Le Carre still had plenty to write despite the lost setting of the Cold War.

And write well.

Le Carre’s spy novels are always more about the interior motives of spy craft. Action is included but not the non-stop punching and shooting of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. 

Le Carre’s characters and world are far more complex; motives are murky; the good guys and the bad guys are just as dangerous but the violence usually lurks just beneath the surface and a gesture can reveal as much or cause as much mayhem as detonating a bomb.

“The Night Manager” is subtle but compelling. A page turner because a reader wants to know what’s going to happen to the characters more than if the heroes can save the world. 

Le Carre’ places Pine deep in dangerous territory physically and emotionally. He also follows the trails of the people who placed Pine there – the bureaucracy of British intelligence, those who recall their responsibility to Pine and those who want to cut him free.

“The Night Manager” is worth finding for the first time or again.