Le Carré vs Fleming

I read the following books by the two authors, frequently called the masters of spy novels.

John Le Carré:
A Murder of Quality, The Looking Glass War, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, A Small Town in Germany

Ian Fleming:
Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker and another book, the name of which I didn't even bother to remember.


Le Carré:-
Murder of Quality is a bit like Agatha Christie. There's no spying stuff involved, though it has George Smiley as the detective. Quiet village town, someone gets violently killed, Smiley is there by chance and he has to investigate the murder. Includes both Hercule "little grey cells" Poirot and Miss "family and stuff, emotions, little village people" Marple type case solving. A decent read for a debut novel.

The Looking Glass War is about two different government agencies against each other and it has so many details about training a spy to go beyond enemy lines. You feel sorry for the one chosen to be the spy, hate the cunning plots of higher ops, despair at how selfish some can be and pray that somehow everything is okay in the end.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold may possibly be the best spy novel ever. The way the plot twists and turns is incredible. It mixes good writing with great bit of drama. The final few chapters are worth reading several times (and that’s not because you didn’t understand them first).

I watched the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a few years ago but thankfully I forgot what happens in the end. It is possibly one of the most complex spy novels. It involves a lot of threads, there are moles, double agents, a possibly fake triple agent who may not be fake and one person (with help from a couple of trustworthy colleagues) to identify the mystery mole who brought down Control, the head of Circus. I'd usually recommend this for others but this needs very very slow reading as the plot gets confusing quite a number of times. Better to read the book mentioned above and fall in love with Carré's style first, before taking up the huge project of reading Tinker Tailor..

Fleming:-
So what happens in Fleming novels is,
Some Communist power (East Germany, Russia, Cuba, etc) is hatching a plot that can cause severe damage to Britain/US (or there's an independent agency/agent who developed the world's most destructive device). Bond is paged and he goes to the respective location. There's a bludy beautiful blonde ready to fall into his arms, who may either be villain's subordinate or villain's prisoner or even Bond's fellow agent. The villain doesn't like his presence, comes close to killing him and our Bond is left with nothing but socks on him. He somehow escapes the villain, plots revenge, makes elaborate plans, gets super cool gadget stuff from M/Q and beats the villain to a pulp in the end.

Throw in a few romantic scenes, terrible writing, long descriptions of bland stuff, few possibly supernatural stuff, few unrealistic gadgets, lady-how-can-you-fall-so-easily-for-anyone incidents and a bit of racist/chauvinist/misogynist stuff.

For a long while, I compared Fleming's Bond to Christie's Poirot before trying to form a concrete negative opinion – I mean, they are a bit similar if you look at it in a way. Bond wins in the end, Poirot solves every case. I can appreciate the way Poirot solves a case so I must be able to appreciate the way Bond works to achieve something though we all know how the two sets of novels are going to end. But I just can't take any Bond stuff. It rarely is about spying and is too much of super hero stuff. You're not cool, man. Only Sean Connery made you cool. (but then only one cooler than Sean Connery is Morgan Freeman, who we all know is God)

Novels of Carré are about spying, which instantly makes him a better spy novel author compared to Fleming. Coz Fleming’s novels are mostly about super cool hero who can never die in the end and wins easily whatever may happen through the course. Sorry Fleming, you can't hold a candle to Le Carré. Not my cup of tea, no sir. Shaken, not stirred – fuck me sideways.


This is possibly the greatest rant of the year. After reading it, I was mumbling to myself: Carmen, let us marry and be angry together.

Adios US: Man Utd 3-1 Liverpool

United XI: De Gea; Jones, Smalling, Evans; Valencia, Herrera, Fletcher, Young; Mata; Rooney, Hernandez.

Van Gaal said before the game that a lot of players would get 90 mins as it's the final match of the tour. Welbeck's unfortunate injury vs Madrid on Saturday meant he didn't start as a precaution. I was eagerly anticipating Sterling vs Valencia as they had a bit of fracas the last time they met (Eng vs Ecu). Liverpool kicked off and they passed amongst themselves for first 2 mins with Utd forwards not pressing them. This was the first shock of the match for me – we have pressed every team so far high up the pitch which led to several chances for us in the previous games. But in this game, especially against Skrtl and Sakho, who are known to panic under pressure, we have not pressed them at all. Only reason I can think of is that we didn't want to get caught high up the pitch when a long ball from them can see Liverpool going on counter through Sterling. Bale caused problems a couple of times like that in the prev game. First chance of the match was through Young on the left wing when he beat Kelly and crossed into the box only for Hernandez to hit the ball away from goal from 5 yards (bonkers, I know!). Sakho (or Skrtl?) cleared the ball before it reached Rooney 3 yards from goal. Valencia felt something in his leg and left the pitch before 10th min. Young moved to right and Shaw came on the left. (Van Gaal said later that he advised his players before the game to come off the pitch if they think they're injured as he didn't want the players to carry on playing with injuries especially after playing only 2 days ago in a high pressure game vs Madrid).

After that, the match was mostly played between the two boxes as both sides rarely caused any trouble inside the penalty area. But one Sterling's run into the Utd box saw Jones lunge wildly and foul him. Gerrard took the penalty, De Gea dived to the wrong side and Liverpool were up 1-0 after 14 mins. It was interesting to see Utd's response as we led in almost every game and were untroubled for most of the tour. And what did we do? We panicked. Fletcher forgot how to pass. Evans, the most reliable passer of our defence, was struggling with passes. There was one moment when Evans was under no pressure initially after receiving the pass from De Gea but he dawdled on the ball for far too long, a Liverpool forward ran to press him and Evans misplaced a 3 yard pass to Smalling who was standing right next to him. Reminded me of Rio in his final years. We defended well on the wings but when players kept running through the middle, we lost our shape and composure easily. Shaw barely broke a sweat while I felt Young could have helped Jones more on the right side. The thing with 3-5-2 is, when Sterling-Lambert-Coutinho (drifting wide) are pressing high up the pitch, then all 3 CBs are occupied and if any one attacker can beat his marker, he'll have a free run towards goal. It happened a few times with Sterling-Jones in this game and Bale-M.Keane in the Madrid game. So we’ll have to tell our wing backs when to attack and when to fall back in defense. Of course the system is new for everyone and Young never even played in defense before so I'm willing to excuse this for now.

Van Gaal replaced Fletcher with Cleverley and Evans with Blackett at HT. So your team is kinda struggling in defense and what do you do? Replace the sole DM with a CM and replace the most experienced CB with the youngest CB on the tour. But hey, it's Van Gaal – he doesn't care for reputation or experience. There were a couple of iffy moments for our defense when Sterling's shot deflected off Smalling (good block though) and missed the net while a Coutinho's shot was well saved by De Gea to his low left. And a weak pass from Herrera saw Gerrard win the ball in our half and pass it to Lambert who shot very weakly straight to De Gea. Our keeper could have gone out for roasted peanuts and still come back on to the pitch to save that shot. We slowly started coming back into the match. In the 55th min, Herrera escaped 3 markers in midfield and passed the ball to Hernandez to the right edge of the box. Hernandez drifted to his right and crossed the ball to Rooney who was running away from the goal to escape Skrtl and still put the ball into the net using his left foot. A brilliant goal that was! Within couple of mins, Cleverley played a cross field ball to Shaw (who was awesome) and his pass found Mata on the edge of the box. Mata's shot took a deflection off Sakho and wrong footed Mignolet before hitting the net. Within couple of mins we went from 1-0 down to 2-1 up. Except for the penalty, our chances were kinda similar – Sterling shot deflected out, Mata shot deflected in; Rooney shot into the goal, Coutinho shot saved by De Gea.

Rodgers replaced the assistant referee Gerrard (dafuq is wrong with this guy? We went on a counter attack once in the first half with Mata chasing the ball, Gerrard was in front of him and without any contact just fell to the floor and grabbed the ball. Ref gave us free kick for handling the ball. Bizarre player this Stevie Me) with Lucas. Emre Can and Ibe also came on. And we got a bizarre goal when Ashley Young beat Glen Johnson on that wing and gave a high cross which hit the bar and came back into play for Rooney to slot into the goal in 65th min. Ref initially awarded us the goal but after consulting the linesman, he called for a goal kick. Right call that was, as the ball hit the stanchion outside the pitch and then came back in. Would have been lovely to see the Scouse tears :D. During all this good phase for us, there's one thing common – our forwards were pressing high so Liverpool defenders panicked and kept hitting the ball outside the pitch (throw ins for us) or hitting the ball in random directions only for Utd players to receive those passes. So anyway, we kinda controlled the game since then and then we replaced Herrera with Lingard. This diminutive player was good for us in last preseason playing as winger and striker. He was good vs Madrid as right wingback and now he was coming on to play in a two-man midfield partnering Cleverley. I was scared at that, we were only 2-1 up! But we never looked out of control and Liverpool barely threatened us since our first goal. It's like all their energy was spent in high pressing during the first hour and they could barely walk after that. Lot of subs also didn't help them. We replaced Mata with Kagawa and Hernandez with Nani.

Special praise to Shaw, who never looked in trouble throughout the game even though his senior partner Evans looked piss scared in possession during the first half. And once Blackett came on, Liverpool barely got anything from that side as Blackett was very composed in possession, harried the Liverpool players in his range and connected well with Smalling (CB next to him), De Gea and Shaw on that side. There was one run from Ibe starting from that side of the pitch and our defenders calmly blocked his passage and ushered him into crowded center where Smalling, Jones and Herrera were present to deal with any danger. Oh also there was another run from Ibe (I think) into the box when Blackett did the very opposite of Jones and calmly blocked the player forcing Ibe to take a Valencia-style shot to the defender’s shin from close range. The ball harmlessly went out for our goal kick. So Liverpool were barely getting anything in attack, our defense looked good and my nerves were settled. In the final mins of normal time, Young went on a run on his right wing, easily beat his marker Glen Johnson (who was unsurprisingly crap) and crossed into the box right to the feet of Kagawa whose iffy touch let the ball run behind him but at that exact position was Lingard making his run from midfield (can you imagine a Utd midfielder making runs into the box to finish off the chances? :o) and his thunderous (hehe) shot went low to Mignolet's left and hit the net. 16th goal of the preseason from Utd in 5 games. We easily saw out the remaining time and won the ICC trophy. Nice to see Luke Shaw winning his first trophy beating his former club Southampton :p

Some last min additions as I can't bother to put them in those paragraphs:
- Sterling and Coutinho were good for Liverpool. Lambert was barely involved.
- Only advantage Hernandez has is that he's extremely clinical. So it's frustrating to see him missing simple chances (2 vs Madrid, 1 vs Liverpool). We can't afford that in competitive games when creating chances would be at a premium.
- Sterling dived more in one game than Young did in entire tour. Makes me laugh so hard!
- Shaw improved a lot after his first two games and did well vs Inter, Madrid and Liverpool. The special fitness program helped him to play well in both defense and attack throughout the game.
- Nani – Heaven know how much I love this guy. But he barely looked interested throughout the tour. Even Zaha performed more than Nani. Van Gaal wants his players to give their all but Nani was half arsed throughout. I fear he'll be sent away from Utd and I cannot even say that it's unfair.
- Rooney won the player of the tournament and Van Gaal said Rooney was the best player as he provided lots of goals and assists. Van Gaal also said that our defenders also did well throughout the tour and that any of them could also have won player of the tournament.
- 5 games, 16 scored, 4 conceded (3 penalties, 1 from 65 yards). Barely any similarities with the clusterfuck of last season’s tour where we ended with 2 wins out of 6 and then proceeded to lose to Sevilla at Old Trafford.

Thus endeth the US tour.