Agent Running in the Field

The novel is set in 2018 and depicts the relationship between Nat (né Anatoly),[2] a 47-year-old member of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and a young man he plays badminton with weekly.[3] In an extract from the novel published prior to publication, The Guardian describes how "Nat admits to serious reservations about the idea of England "as the mother of all democracies", describing the country as in freefall, with "a minority Tory cabinet of 10th-raters... Labour no better. The sheer bloody lunacy of Brexit". Boris Johnson is described in the book as a "pig-ignorant foreign secretary".[4]

John le Carré's editor at Viking Books, Mary Mount, has said that "The thing about Le Carré is that he's always been as much at home in Europe as Britain. A man with his experience of the Cold War could not walk away from the divisions in Britain, and between Britain and Europe... After the referendum, there was no choice for him except to look at where we are now... It is incredibly prescient, and a very emotional book in terms of how connected he feels to the history of Britain and Europe. There's no looking away, he addresses the very current political crisis".[1][5]

According to Bethanne Patrick, writing for NPR, "The pre-publication press release tells us this is le Carré's "Brexit novel", but that diminishes a novel that may be a portrait in miniature of modern spies, but is in miniature as detailed and astonishing and entertaining as anything in its genre today.[6] Robert McCrum wrote of the book; "Le Carré delivers a tale for our times, replete with the classic seasoning of betrayal, secret state shenanigans and sad-eyed human frailty, all baked into an oven-hot contemporary thriller that’s partly inspired by the machinations of 21st-century Ukraine, today more than ever the fatal crossroads of great power politics."[7] An anonymous book review at Kirkus Reviews summarised; "A tragicomic salute to both the recuperative powers of its has-been hero and the remarkable career of its nonpareil author."[8] Michael J. McCann found the book "a pleasure to read" but also noted the secondary characters were under-done and the ending "feels hurried and rather truncated."[9]