Thu 8 Jul 2010
Reviewed by Marvin Lachman: PETER WOLFE – Corridors of Deceit.
Posted by Steve under Reference works / Biographies , Reviews[2] Comments
by Marvin Lachman
PETER WOLFE – Corridors of Deceit: The World of John Le Carré. Popular Press, hardcover/trade paperback, 1987.
Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 1988.
Peter Wolfe’s Corridors of Deceit is a subtle analysis of the man who brought realism (and, for me, boredom) to the spy story. I clearly am in the minority, as the Best-Seller charts show.
Fans of Le Carré will find this book satisfying because Wolfe is a perceptive writer, as he showed several years ago in his analysis of the works of Hammett, Beams Falling. His may well be the definitive book on the most popular serious spy novelist of our time.
Editorial Comment: This is the fifth in a series of reviews in which Marv covered reference works published in 1987, books about the field of mystery and crime fiction. Preceding this one was Campion’s Career, by B. A. Pike. You can find it here.
July 8th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
In some cases the Wolfe book is better than the books themselves. At his best I enjoy Le Carre, but he certainly can be dull, and is without doubt the worst critically acclaimed writer of all time. He makes prosaic seem a virtue.
But at times his themes overcome that, and the two end pieces of the SMILEY TRILOGY are good reads.
But that said, he can’t write dialogue, he can’t write women, he can’t write action, and his one mainstream novel was a disaster, and all his famous expertise about trade-craft is made up whole cloth — including calling the SIS the Circus.
He may be the dullest thriller writer who ever lived, but they made some damn fine films from his work despite the fact that THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD is easily the stupidest plot for a spy novel ever conceived. It makes some ‘cozy’ manor house mysteries seem realistic.
July 22nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm
[…] and crime fiction. Preceding this one was Corridors of Deceit, by Peter Wolfe. You can find it here. […]