Rating: 
Summary: Humanity & loyalty in a setting of ruthless high finance.
Review: John le Carre has produced another masterful novel. The basic theme is individual decency, loyalty and helplessness. Unlike his Cold War novels, the backdrop is capitalist Russia and international finance, instead of espionage.
This is the story of Oliver Single, apprentice at his father Tiger's financial empire, messenger between Single & Single and a Georgian/Russian family, the Orlovs. He falls in love with the Orlov family and their daughter Goya, but betrays both his father and the Orlovs by walking to the government to tell all. Sent into hiding by the government, he comes out again four years later, in search of his father Tiger Single, who has disappeared after Single & Single's top lawyer is executed on a Turkish hilltop.
Tortured by his betrayal and by his conscience, Oliver is the heart of the novel.
This is also the story of Alix Hoban, a Westernized Russian crook. Married to Goya Orlov but faithful only to himself, Alix makes ambitious plans for selling his peoples' blood to the West, but failing that, runs a drug trafficking business on a massive scale, from Istanbul and Vienna. He tries to take over both the Orlov and the Single empires, but his ruthlessness does not pay off in the end.
This is also the story of Brock, fighting corruption in British law enforcement and running undercover operations for evidence against Single & Single. (This part I found untenable. Aren't ruthless bloodthirsty financialists the engine of Anglo-American growth and imperialism? Why should the British government run operations against its finest wealth-creators? But, okay, fiction is fiction.)
And this novel is a story of ruthlessness, and a vision of how the rich & powerful actually run this world of ours.
But despite the dark backdrop, "Single & Single" is lighter and more hopeful than many of Mr. le Carre's earlier novels.
There is the portrayal of Goya, crying for all the victims of white powder (heroin?) traded by her family. And Aggie, a girl working for Brock, with morals far higher than you would imagine from your knowledge of the English.
And of course there's Oliver, and the little Oliver-Aggie love story.
In its hope and humanity, and with its little love stories, "Single & Single" is a bit like le Carre's "Russia House." A reviewer of "Russia House" said: "Fans of the George Smiley books may find themselves disappointed, but I think fans of Le Carre as the storyteller and writer will be very satisfied." I can say the same of "Single & Single."
As in other le Carre books, you have to get well into the book before you piece together what the story is about. I guess this is not news to le Carre fans, and I hope new readers are not put off by it.
As in the author's other novels, you get a sense of the research that went into the book, and the meticulous connection with reality. Like in le Carre's "Our Game", you get a human picture of peripheral pieces of the Russian empire. How does le Carre know people from so many different places, so well? The Russian murderer rings as true as the Turkish small-town police & mayor, as does the flowing emotions of the Georgian women, and the selfish Polish lawyer.
I also appreciated the smell of Istanbul coming out in the descriptions, soooo real. As well as the descriptions of traveling across Europe, Zurich to Vienna to Istanbul, and the feeling of displacement with too much traveling. Le Carre knows the continent well. I can't testify about the Georgia/Russia descriptions; I haven't been there yet.
The novel begins with the description of an execution, on a Turkish hilltop, carried out ceremonially by a rather international assortment of criminals. This description is masterful, done from the point of view of the condemned.
Well worth the read, and then (like much of le Carre) also worth a second read because you won't get everything the first time around.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow & Unsteady
Review: Calling this book a "thriller" is a bit like calling English cooking "cuisine" (or that "not a cheap shot"). Countless digressions and flashbacks prevent the story from building up much tension. The opening chapter serves as a good case in point: When threatened with execution, Alfie Winser's life literally passes in front of his eyes. This seems witty at first, until it begins (and continues) to happen to people whose lives are not in similar jeopardy. In the final 75 pages or so the pot finally begins to boil, but we're left with such a waterlogged mess that the climax lacks any real punch.The story revolves around Oliver Single, one half of the book's title and junior partner of the story's eponymous capital investment firm. After experiencing ethical business qualms he leaves the firm, revealing its secrets to and British Intelligence and allowing them to set him up with a new identity. Of course, that never goes to plan, and coincident with his cover getting blown, Winser is killed and his father disappears. There's nothing left to do but for Oliver to become a junior G-man, find his dad, thwart the villains, and save the day. Sure, that's a pretty simplistic overview; on the way he has to fool around with three or four women, too. If you enjoy psychoanalyzing things, you'll get a kick out of this book. Everybody has issues. Everybody's in denial. From the obligatory psychopathy and transgenerational child abandonment to exhibitionism and German-engineered phallic symbols, this book has it all. If, on the other hand, you like a tale of espionage, cat and mouse, cross and double-cross ... well, there's always the Smiley books. In the end, Single & Single is a love story between a son and his father, so perhaps it's only natural that there be an Oedipal angle to the whole thing. If you go into it aware of what you're getting yourself into, perhaps you'll enjoy it more than I did. At any rate, the scene where Yevgeny Orlov asks Oliver to hop on his motorcycle ("Ride it, Post Boy! Ride it!" (p. 179)) takes on a whole new meaning when looked at from a Freudian point of view.
Rating: 
Summary: Could not be more disappointed
Review: It had been a long time (over fifteen years) since I had last read a John LeCarre novel when I picked up this novel out of a bargain bin. Reading the story, I was reminded why I had gone so long without reading his books. Single and Single is not really a bad novel, but it is not a very exciting one either. The plot revolves around Oliver Single, son and partner of Tiger Single. Tiger is a wheeler and a dealer with a limited sense of ethics. Oliver's own ethics have caused him to betray his father to the law and go into hiding. When Tiger's life is threatened, however, Oliver re-emerges into society and searches for his father. For a story that deals with murder, betrayal and theft, there isn't all that much to excite. The characters are well-written but bland and the structure of the story is more complicated than it needs to be. I understand that LeCarre is supposed to be a master of the mundane spy story, but this is one tale that is a little too mundane and not masterful enough. For better works in the same field, I would recommend Len Deighton; once again, LeCarre has failed to impress me and it may be a long time again before I read another of his books.
Rating: 
Summary: A new and different Le Carre
Review: Single and Single portrays the consequences for Oliver Single after his crisis of conscience. Single is a trust lawyer, with his father, for an emerging Russian Mafia family. The novel thrusts Single into a cloak and dagger world where he attempts to rescue his estranged father, and uncover the conspiracy within the conspiracy of the Russia underworld. The novel maintains tight suspense, and yet addresses issues of personal ethics and family relations. The book is really a great read, the only drawback is the lack of development among woman's characters. This weakness has little impact on the story or the message, and like some others of Le Carre's books the main character propels the story into a thought provoking struggle between ideas, as much as a struggle between people.
Rating:
Summary: Blood will tell
Review: Le Carre's writing talents didn't tumble with The Berlin Wall's rubble. Since the fading of the Cold War, he's demonstrated his continuing ability to weave a plot and image people apart from those in the espionage game. In this book, the Russians are still with us, but in a whole new light - they're active capitalists trying to make a ruble. Any way they can. Flogging "clean Caucasoid blood" to the West is merely an opening gambit, but it's a start. In support of this immaculate enterprise, the financial house of Single is recruited for money management. Tiger Single, the senior partner, with his son Oliver, are set to reap a fortune. Certain events impair the smooth flow of cash, and the Russian partners turn to a new means of profit-making, drugs. As a lawyer in a financial management organization, Oliver draws the line at drugs. It jeopardizes the future of the firm, and his own. He informs on his father to government officials in the hope of cutting a deal. Like many other Le Carre novels, this one eschews a simple linear plot format. You are offered a thread to study, then another seemingly unrelated, one. You must carry the information you're given when other threads emerge. But Le Carre never leaves you hanging or lost. The threads begin to come together in the rich tapestry Le Carre is so talented at weaving. Nothing is inevitable, the twists are sometimes abrupt, but never implausible. There are no real weaknesses in this plot. Some of the characterization, however, seems a bit contrived, unusual in Le Carre. Although not an espionage novel, Le Carre draws Oliver as if he was a George Smiley operative. He goes to ground with amazing skill for a lawyer, his cover the performance of children's magic shows. Oliver maintains this role long enough to marry, bear a daughter and complete a divorce. He is "run" by a Brock who teaches him tradecraft, which in Oliver's case only requires some touching up, not attending the whole course. Oliver is loved or admired by more women than one man deserves - his landlady, a Russian gangster's wife and Aggie, one the Brock's agents. Somehow, given Aggie's role, this last seems the least plausible. As with other post-Cold War Le Carre novels, this one is as much education as entertainment. You close the last page but you find closing down the memories and topics more difficult. International blood traffic is a real issue, exactly as pharmaceuticals were in The Constant Gardner. The issues are real, the people mostly convincing, the events hidden from the public eye, but revealing in their likelihood. Any Le Carre novel is worth a read, some welcoming a revisit. Single and Single is one worth picking up again.
Rating:
Summary: Dull, repetitive and pointless
Review: Although the Cold War has long since faded into the history books, John Le Carre is still turning out good, well-written spy stories. You cannot use the term "potboiler" with a Le Carre book, although some of his more recent endeavors have come dangerously close to that level. Thankfully, "Single & Single" is not one of them. Since the KGB doesn't exist anymore, Le Carre must look elsewhere for the kind of story he writes like nobody else. And he's found it in the story of Oliver Single, the son and junior partner of a banking house whose owner and senior partner is a greedy, corrupt, and probably amoral (business)man who has gotten in way over his head by getting involved in the drug trade with some - shall we say, less than reputable - gentlemen from the former Soviet Union. As with most Le Carre novels, the story moves back, forth, and sideways between various parts of and characters within the same story. You have to flip back a few times to keep track of who's who and what's what, but that was part of the charm of the George Smiley/Karla series, and it's the same here. Unfortunately this book does suffer from the one flaw that exists in most of Le Carre's books - and that's an uncanny ability to turn its so-called action sequences into the dullest parts of the story. I actually enjoyed the back-and-forth between the characters more than I enjoyed what they did. But if this "flaw" were corrected, I think I'd actually like Le Carre less than I do. Weird, isn't it?
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