Two Spy Novels: "Sweet Tooth" and "A Delicate Truth"

Well, not really.  One, A Delicate Truth by John le Carré, is indeed a spy novel set in the post 9/11 era. The other, Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan, is more a love story of 1970's England with the MI-5, Britain's domestic secret service, as the backdrop.

Sixty-five-year-old Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed, multiple-prize-winning author of short stories and novels covering a variety of topics - including climate change (Solar), a day in the life of a neurosurgeon (Saturday), a World War II family saga (Atonement) and, early in his career, Gothic short stories and novels that earned him the unfortunate nickname "Ian Macabre." Several of his books have been turned into movies. Time magazine named Atonement as one of the 100 all-time greatest novels and The Times (UK) listed him as one of the 50 greatest writers since 1945.

Serena Frome is the daughter of an Anglican bishop and the protagonist of McEwan's novel. She is a voracious reader who ends up studying maths at Cambridge. During her last year there, she has a brief affair with a middle-aged history tutor, Tony Canning, who apparently has been grooming her for a career in the Secret Service. The Cold War is in full gear and America is at war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Britain is dealing with the IRA, labor unrest, and economic difficulties. Feminism and the limited role of women in the Secret Service color Serena's time in the MI-5.  Sweet Tooth's plot is summarized in the first lines of the novel: "My name is Serena Frome...almost forty years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British Secret Service. I didn't return safely. Within eighteen months I was sacked, having disgraced myself and ruined my lover..." 

Don't expect much in the way of cold war intrigue or dangerous spy missions in McEwan's novel. Though there are references to the Cold War, Vietnam, the IRA and other 1972-ish concerns and though there's a touch of the paranoia common to spy novels (Serena's room is searched, her friend is unexpectedly fired from MI-5, evidence of a mysterious safe house), Sweet Tooth is primarily a love story. The lover referred to is a young writer, Tom Haley, whom Serena is sent to recruit for a cultural propaganda program, code-named Sweet Tooth. In researching the writer, Serena reads Haley's short stories and, after meeting him, recommends that he be taken into the program. Sweet Tooth provides money to promising and, hopefully, MI5-acceptable (that is, anti-Communist) writers. Deceit, love, conflicting loyalties - all make an appearance in McEwan's novel.

Each of Serena's loves leads either directly or indirectly to the next. Her Cambridge boy friend, Jeremy, introduces her to his tutor, Tony Canning. Tony prepares her for joining MI-5. where she meets Max who is part of the Sweet Tooth program. And the Sweet Tooth program leads her to Tom Haley - a writer with a couple of interesting parallels to McEwan himself. Serena reads Tom Haley's stories and wonders if she can read anything into his character (and his approach to women) from them.  Haley is as eager as she to form a relationship and they meet at the National Portrait Gallery where Serena muses: "Looking at pictures with a stranger is an unobtrusive form of mutual exploration and mild seduction."

The conflict between her mission and employment by MI-5 on the one hand and her growing feelings for the young author on the other leads her into a continuing series of lies and deceptions. She does not come across as either a heroine or a villain, just a conflicted young woman coming of age in the 1970's. Although it's not a spy novel per se, before Serena's story is over, McEwan provides two surprising twists - one having to do with the abrupt disappearance of Tony Canning.

McEwan is a tireless researcher for his stories. One of the people he spoke to while preparing to write Sweet Tooth was none other than John le Carré (the pen name of David Cornwell).  John le Carré was himself a British intelligence officer and has authored numerous espionage novels. Now 81, le Carré burst onto the best-seller scene with the 1963 publication of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The novel received critical acclaim and became an international best-seller. It was selected as one of the All-Time 100 Novels by TIME Magazine. In 2006, Publishers Weekly named it the “best spy novel of all-time”. Published at the height of East-West tensions, the novel became known for its portrayal of the inconsistency of Western espionage methods with our democracy and our declared moral values. A Delicate Truth continues that tradition.

The novel opens with an attempted extraordinary rendition in the British Crown Colony of Gibraltar. The target of "Operation Wildlife" is a jihadist arms buyer and is to be carried out by US military and intelligence and a security firm (somewhat ironically named "Ethical Outcomes"). Since the operation takes place on British soil, it is to be supported by British intelligence. An experienced member of the Foreign Office (Christopher (Kit) Probyn, renamed Paul Anderson for the operation) is recruited by Cabinet Minister Fergus Quinn to serve as Quinn's "red telephone" during the operation. In spite of the misgivings of the ground team, the night-time operation goes ahead and, unbeknownst to Paul, terribly wrong. As Paul is hustled unceremoniously off the scene, his handler Kirsty's parting words are: 'It was a triumph. Right? No casualties. We did a great job. All of us. You, too. Right?'  

Three years later, Kit Probyn has retired from the Foreign Office.  He and his wife Suzanna have settled into a remote North Cornish village after his final posting to a tropical location, which he suspects was a reward for his participation in the Gibraltar operation. Jeb, one of his comrades from Operation Wildlife, shows up as an itinerant leather goods peddler at a summer festival in town and Kit is at pains to prevent him from creating "the most outrageous, the most irresponsible breach of the Official Secrets Act." But Kit is beginning to suspect something more may be going on here. "Was he in present or past time? It was the same shirt, the same sweat, the same heat in both places: here and now on Bailey's Meadow to the thump of the hurdy-gurdy, or on a Mediterranean hillside at dead of night to the throb of engines out to sea...And how do two confiding, darting, brown eyes manage to grow old and wrinkled and lose their lightness of being in the ridiculous short space of three years."   Unfortunately, before Kit can resolve his conflicting emotions, the apparently untraceable Jeb leaves and the aging Kit resolves to find him.

Meanwhile, Toby Bell, "a thirty-one year old British foreign servant ear-marked for great things" has decided to go public with a secret recording of the meeting of Quinn, "Paul" and Jeb just prior to the launch of Operation Wildlife. Toby has become increasingly frustrated when his supervisors and mentors stonewall and warn him off from pursuing the matter. He is an idealist who had opposed British support for the Iraq War and "wished to make a difference - or as he had put it a little shamefacedly to his examiners, take part in his country's discovery of its true identity in a post-imperial, post-Cold War world."

Jeb resurfaces and Kit arranges a meeting. When Jeb fails to show and "a woman doctor who is patently not a doctor and should have been a man calls Kit, alias Paul, and tells him that Jeb has been confined in a mental hospital", Kit reaches out to Toby.  Kit's daughter Emily, concerned for her aging father, also becomes involved in what becomes a perilous search for the truth. Hunted by unnamed elements in British intelligence, their search takes them to Jeb's ex-wife, Toby's mentor, and Shorty, Jeb's best friend  and an Operation Wildlife operative, as they race to release the documentation of the failed operation.

"If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out." - Oscar Wilde (frontispiece quote from A Delicate Truth)