The Night Manager by John le Carré

The Night Manager
by John le Carré

Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books; Mti edition (March 29, 2016)
ISBN-13: 978-0399594007
Kindle: 2433 KB
Publisher: Ballantine Books; Ballentine Books ed edition (September 16, 2015)
ASIN: B01501O0NQ
Available on Amazon

Arms Deals, Conspiracy, Revenge

The Night Manager was originally published in 1993, and I think it is John le Carré's first post-Cold War novel. A lot of fans strongly prefer his earlier books, specially The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974). The reason le Carré writes such great spy novels is that he worked in MI-6 - in fact he was working there while writing until the former novel, his third, was an instant bestseller and he was able to quit.

Now comes my confession - I have not read the book, but I thought it would be fun to put it up in a post because I am really enjoying the BBC TV mini-series on AMC which is now on episode 3 of 6. It's based on the book, but set in more recent times. It's about an actual night manager at a hotel in Cairo, Jonathan Pine (played brilliantly by Tom Hiddleston) at the time of the Arab Spring riots. He's a former British soldier who likes the quiet life of working the night shift. One of the guests, the mistress of the scion of a powerful Egyptian family, comes to him with an unusual request. That request draws him into the dangerous world of an international arms dealer and espionage in an exciting story of conspiracy and revenge.

The actors do a really good job, specially Tom Hiddleston in the lead and Hugh Laurie as "the worst man in the world" Richard Roper. The action sequences are explosive and gritty, while over-all the direction gives the series the atmosphere of some of the earlier Bond movies, where dreamy exotic locales with beautiful people hide a tension about to explode in violence. There's a deep sense of danger running through the every episode.

The Night Manager airs on AMC on Tuesday's at 10/9C. There are three episodes remaining, and most providers do have it On Demand. Amazon also has it (see the preceding link). The whole series is also available on DVD but not in region 1 format yet.

Reviewed by VM on Month DD, YEAR