A month after le Carré’s fifth novel was released in bookstores, “What Ritual Is Being Observed Tonight?” appeared in a November 1968 issue. (Read the entire story here.)

It is a good example of the author’s skill with language, his unerring ear for dialogue, and his sharp eye for the telling detail. However, the story does not involve le Carré’s usual world of international politics and espionage. Instead, it gives us a glimpse into the world he knew during a seven-year hiatus from active intelligence work, when he earned a degree at Oxford and taught at Eton College. In 1959, le Carré—then known only as David Cornwell—joined Britain’s foreign-intelligence service. He worked undercover in Germany, directing spies, interrogating suspected double agents, and gathering intelligence on Soviet activity. He also began writing fiction and turned out two mystery stories set in the world of spies.

With his third book, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, he became a best-selling author. The book was highly successful, even before it was made into a movie with Richard Burton. His sudden fame encouraged le Carré to take up writing as a full-time career. The decision was well timed, since a top British agent had just fled to Russia, offering the Soviets the names and backgrounds of Britain’s undercover agents—presumably including le Carré’s.

Le Carré is now regarded as one of the foremost authors of spy novels. However, his spies exist in an entirely different world than the one in which the James Bond spy thrillers were set. Le Carré’s secret agents usually work in drab offices and unromantic cities, amid moral ambiguities, and their operations are as likely to fail as succeed. Yet, this more realistic view of the intelligence operations has proved very popular with readers.

While there isn’t a breath of espionage in the following story, it does center on a theme that has continually intrigued the author: the conflict between the heart and the mind, the struggle between the intellectual and the lover. It is a rare gem that a lesser writer might have stretched into a too-long novel, and it features a resolution that you might not expect from the creator of The Russia House; The Constant Gardener; A Perfect Spy; and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Famous Contributors: John le Carré The Saturday Evening Post

Of course, every war must have rules, and the war presented in this book has three:

1. No killing innocent bystanders (nonparticipants).
2. No killing anyone under the age of 18—no matter what side they’re on.
3. No one in involved in the war under the age of 18 can have a child or else that child will be given to the other side.

Written in first-person in the form of the protagonist’s journal, Shane’s story is, by necessity, episodic; much of the action revolves around the protagonist going on assassination missions for his side of the war. There is never any further explanation for the war, which is actually a brilliant decision on the part of the author. By leaving the conflict vague, the reader can see the ongoing battle as a metaphor for the wars in the real world—whether actual wars (such as the one in Iraq) or wars of ideology (such as the perceived one between Republicans and Democrats). The way in which the characters on one side of the war demonize the characters on the other—even when they don’t really understand why—makes an astute observation about the way humans work in general. Let’s face it, we have a tendency to devolve into an “us” versus “them” mentality, and Shane uses his novel to dramatize that.

Shane explores those weighty ideas throughout the first half of his novel—which, coincidentally, was my favorite part of the book. The paranoid tension of the “soldiers” as they dispatched their various victims kept me interested, as did learning the parameters of Shane’s world and his secret war. After the protagonist becomes entangled with the love interest midway through the novel, however, the plot took a turn (one I won’t give away here) that caused the story to become a more typical chase story. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing; if you’re looking for a story about two kids on the run from an army of killers, you’ll certainly like the second half.

Overall, I really enjoyed Children of Paranoia. For a first novel, Shane’s work here is impressive. He certainly knows how to stage an action scene and how to ratchet up tension. If you’re in the market for an exciting, propulsive read for a late-summer beach visit, Children of Paranoia would make an excellent choice. The novel will be released as a 384-page hardcover on September 8, 2011, by Dutton.

Children of Paranoia The Saturday Evening Post