Review of spy thriller Karla's Choice with retired CIA officer Carmen Amato

2 minute watch (PREVIEW), 12 min read.

Mystery/thriller author and retired CIA intelligence officer Carmen Amato joined me to review Karla’s Choice, a 2024 novel by Nick Harkaway that continues the George Smiley spy thriller series.

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READ the full transcript below, lightly edited for length and clarity.

LINDA: Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us on From Fact to Fiction, where we unpack the truth behind my favorite specialty thrillers. Think Michael Crichton, John le Carré, Tom Clancy.

While these works do differ in specific subgenre, each immerse the reader in a new but realistic world. And the best of these blend fact and fiction so well, it's hard to tell the difference. You don't know what is, what could be, and what's totally impossible.

It would take an expert to know.

That's why each time we meet, I'll pair up with an expert and we'll select a new specialty thriller to review. We'll talk about why we love the book, but also unpack the truth behind the fiction.

Introducing Karla’s Choice

Our book today is 2024’s, Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway.

“Set in the missing decade between two iconic installments in John le Carré's George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Karla’s Choice marks a momentous return to the world of spy fiction's greatest writer.” (quote from the publisher).

This fabulous novel is penned by le Carré's son, who writes under the name Nick Harkaway.

Our Expert, Carmen Amato

LINDA: Our expert today is mystery and thriller author Carmen Amato. Carmen is a retired CIA intelligence officer, a recipient of both the National Intelligence Award and the Career Intelligence Medal, previously head of a U.S. National Intelligence Tradecraft School, and also head of an intelligence collection program with responsibility across the Western Hemisphere.

Could we have a better expert? No.

Carmen draws on her counter-drug and espionage experiences to craft intrigue-filled crime fiction, notably the award-winning Detective Amelia Cruz police series set in Acapulco. The series won the Poison Cup Award for Outstanding Series from Crime Masters of America in multiple years and has been optioned for television. (Find Carmen at carmenamato.net & on mysteryahead.substack.com)

Carmen, we couldn't have anybody better to talk to about this book. Thank you so much and welcome to From Fact to Fiction.

CARMEN: Thank you, Linda. I'm excited to be here. I really love the focus you've got going for this podcast.

LINDA: Thank you. You’ve got to do what you love, I realize.

It's awesome to have you here, Carmen. You're a very prolific writer and your books are wonderful. If you like Karla's Choice, you will love Carmen’s The Hidden Light of Mexico City.

Reviewing Karla’s Choice

LINDA: I wanted to mention one review quote that I saw for Karla's Choice.

“Smiley’s Circus was the depiction of intelligence work, which for a lot of people—whether they know it or not—framed the Cold War. His was the grim, unrelenting and unacknowledged theatre of espionage… “

I love it because it was written by David Robarge, who is the CIA's chief historian. He wrote this long review on Karla's Choice, and I figure if the CIA writes a review of your spy thriller, you've made it.

CARMEN: Well, in the CIA library, which is huge, there is a big collection of spy craft literature, fiction literature. And for the longest time, there were books on display. So when you walked into the library, that was one of the first things you would see in this glass case.

Anyway, I do think that for a lot of people, John le Carré gave them an idea of what was going on behind the scenes during the Cold War.

But keep in mind, too, that the Circus is a made-up thing. There is, as far as I know, nothing referred to as the Circus. And that in Le Carre's world of the circus, there was a blending of activities and authorities that encompassed both domestic and foreign activities. In le Carre's book, it's all blended seamlessly.

In the United States, in reality, the CIA has no arrest authority and no authority to operate domestically. That's the purview of the FBI. And even overseas, which is CIA domain, the CIA does not have arrest authority.

LINDA: That's why we need people like you to remind us [of reality], Carmen.

Karla's Choice, set in 1963, begins with the botched assassination of a Hungarian emigrant who it turns out is a Soviet spy acting as a London literary agent.

Gotta love that part.

But they find out his killing was ordered by Moscow Center, which I guess is his take on the KGB. When the circus–which is his take on MI6–when they find out, that's when they drag our hero, George Smiley, out of retirement, and they convince him and his team to take on the mission of trying to find the missing Hungarian literary agent, and also to find out why his own team, Moscow Center, would want him dead, and to try to turn him into an asset.

That's it, in a nutshell, I won't give away more to the plot, But what we see is that his quest requires much spycraft, many fake identities and passports, infiltrations and illegal border crossings and great escapes and daring rescues.

And so, Carmen, before we get into some of the facts behind the fiction, what did you think of Karla's Choice as a reader?

Did you like it? Love it? Hate it?

CARMEN: I loved it. Because it filled in the gap so well between the spy who came in from the cold, in which Smiley's officer, Alex Lemus, is sent into East Berlin, and remember the Berlin Wall was up, to recruit a Stasi officer. Unfortunately, Alex Lemus is killed at the end of the book.

There was nothing about George Smiley and the death of Alex Lemus in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy—which is all about the hunt for a mole within the circuit. So it was up to Harkaway to plug that hole in his father's universe of the career of George Smiley.

And George Smiley is perpetually on the brink of retirement, or he has retired. His wife is unfaithful, but of course you could not leave somebody like Lady Anne Smiley. So you always have that aspect of the character.

So if you were going to read these books in order, you'd start with The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, then you'd read Karla's Choice, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and then you would wind up this whole journey with George Smiley in Smiley's People, in which he finally gets his man, who is–I don't know, are we doing spoilers today?

LINDA: No. No, we're not.

CARMEN: That's the order you want to read this book, to get the full view. What I liked so much about Karla's Choice was that it perfectly emulated John le Carre's style, not only just in the word choice, but as you go through, you realize just how much of the action is told to Smiley in basically the memories of people who have worked in the circus.

That's how he pieces everything together to come to the solution and actually is forced into that cross-border action, the drama at the end. And if you read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and even more in Smiley's People, that's how these stories are told, basically in flashbacks recounted to Smiley.

LINDA: That's right.

However, there is a great action scene–the escape scene in Budapest–which is fabulous, I thought. You could just see a made for the big screen moment going on there. It was wonderful.

CARMEN: Oh, I actually tabbed this bit.

They're in a car. They're at the border. They don't have exit visas. The soldiers are there and Smiley doesn't speak the language. He knows one word of Hungarian.

(Carmen reads from Karla’s Choice here)

“Pen, he said, ‘Toll’ his one word of Hungarian spoken with a distaste that was almost physical. He still had not turned his head.”

He's not even looking at this border guard.

“The boy took his pen from his pocket and handed it over. Smiley received it and then put out his hand again, flat like a table. He closed the fingers once, twice, and opened them again in clear instruction. He wanted the passports as well. The boy hesitated and then laid them on the waiting hand. Susanna thought his fingers were shaking. Smiley very deliberately flicked through the pages one by one until he reached the stamp. Resting on the dash, he drew a line through it where the day code should have been then signed underneath, an appallingly elegant signature in the classic 19th century cursive style of peace treaties and royal decrees.

Then again, one, two, three. He held each page open so the ink wouldn't smudge. When he was satisfied, he closed the passports and finally turned his head to look at the boy for the first time.

It was the purest expression of power and arrogance Susanna had ever seen.”

And that's how they get out.

LINDA: I love that. I love that scene.

CARMEN: So powerful, yes, and it gives you that visual, and and –oh my gosh–just the bravado that Smiley puts on.

LINDA: I love the writing. The writing is masterful. I bought the audio book and I listened to it almost twice, but I'm going to have to get the ebook just to be able to study, some of his word mastery. It's just amazing.

CARMEN: Word mastery is such a wonderful way to put it. Harkaway has such a command of language and vocabulary that you don't often see. le Carré had it, but I actually think Harkaway is the cleaner writer. It was easier to follow Karla's Choice than it was to follow Tinker Tailor's Ultra Spy.

The Facts Behind The Fiction

LINDA: This seemed like a softer, more progressive world than was represented in le Carre's books, and in 1963.

Having women as [characters within the Circus]: the head of research and the aunts—women “too Jewish" and too Jamaican” and lesbian.

I just wondered if my feeling was right, it was not accurate.

CARMEN: Actually, I think it was very accurate.

LINDA: Really?

CARMEN: I think it was accurate. But keep in mind, all those women were in a support role. They were researchers, they were translators, they were housekeepers for the safe houses, this sort of thing.

And I think that was pretty much the same in the U.S. intel community back in the day.

LINDA: Oh, great. So did they get put in those roles during World War II and then it was more accepted?

CARMEN: I think that's probably what happened. So many women came into the government workforce and into the organs of espionage in both countries and they fulfilled a great role.

Now, I don't think it was until the 70s that women became case officers. And that's the people actually going out and recruiting the agents you want to give you information or doing various things.

So I think the depiction was probably pretty good.

LINDA: Awesome. Well, let's keep going with the facts behind the fiction.

Was the portrayal of these satellite countries and East Berlin, was that an accurate portrayal for that?

CARMEN: Oh, yes. I think that the snitches on every street corner, the Stasi's pervasive surveillance of the population, just the clamp down. I think Iron Curtain was a very apt description. Thank you, Winston Churchill.

I've been to Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, seeing the remnants of the Berlin Wall, the displays there about people just desperate to get out,whether they tunneled or hid themselves in the back of a tiny car trunk to get through.

I think that all of the Smiley books did a very good job of portraying the difficult situation in those East European states.

LINDA: In our story, they send out an assassin to take out one of their own, the Hungarian spy.

Did that happen? Did Russia send out hit squads to take out enemies, their own and others, in other countries? And is that still happening today, do you think, from Russia?

CARMEN: My view is yes.

Sergei Skripal, the Russian who was poisoned in London. And in this case, the poison got on the doorknob.

There was the other...Russian who died of the plutonium poisoning [this was Alexander "Sasha" Litvinenko, a Russian intelligence officer who defected to the UK in 2001]

So, we know about those cases because the British press was pretty open about it.

And of course, [Litvinenko] lingered in the hospital for quite some time before succumbing to the poison.

So, yeah, I think it still does go on.

LINDA: Right.

CARMEN: Good times. Let's move on.

LINDA: Yes, let's move on.

Going back to the world of espionage and Smiley's world and his colleagues and how they operated.

One of the things they had to do is assume multiple identities and border crossings, and they had all these different passports.

And I'm sure that was easier then than it would be today, way easier.

But still, was that realistic for them assuming all these, were they so clandestine that they assumed all these different multiple identities and passports all the time?

CARMEN: I think the book probably exaggerated that because it makes for fabulous fiction, everybody wearing a different hat every day, and they're traveling all over the place.

And of course, when you only have a certain number of characters you want to fit into a story, they all have to wear these different hats if that's what you want to have happen.

I think in real life, you can look at books like Argo, or the movie Argo, when people were using disguises, they were using different passports, different nationalities for a particular operation.

It wasn't that they had this big bag of passports and today I'm going to be Carmen, tomorrow I'm going to be Linda, next day I'm going to be Elizabeth.

So I think that this book exaggerates that a little bit, but it sure does make for exciting reading.

LINDA: So there were two other things that struck me.

One was the shoes and the care they took with their shoes and to make sure that their shoes weren't new and they were wearing the shoes from the right country.

CARMEN: Shoes are a giveaway.

I went to college in Paris And my roommate and I both had yellow Nike sneakers when we arrived in Paris at a time when everybody in France and especially Spain wore black or brown.

And we stood out.

LINDA: [laughs]. We do still.

And then last was, this was hilarious when they had the dormitory full of different kinds of bathrooms.

And I think it said, “there's nothing more likely to blow your cover than an inability to contend with bathroom facilities you supposedly have been using from birth.”

I love that. So did you ever have bathroom training, Carmen?

CARMEN: No, I never did.

LINDA: I'm sure you've seen some in your travels that are very different.

CARMEN: Actually, if you are a penniless student backpacking through Europe, staying at youth hostels, you will find out that not everyone has the same sanitary habits and practices as you. And I will leave it at that.

LINDA: All right. So on that note, our final question.

Does Karla's Choice portray a realistic life of a spy in 1963 Europe? What do you think? Fact or fiction? Or a little of both?

CARMEN: I think a little of both. There's definitely the ambiance, the sense of danger that comes through in those books. And definitely Russia and the Soviet Union and its East European allies were a dangerous environment for any intel officer or operation during those years.

LINDA: Well, thank you, Carmen. Thank you so much for joining us today.

If you like Karla's Choice, you will love Carmen's book, The Hidden Light of Mexico City. This political thriller is full of danger and political intrigue but is way more vibrant and colorful than the gray, cold-war world depicted by le Carré and Harkway.

Carmen, will you come back and speak with us about the facts behind the fiction in The Hidden Light of Mexico City?

CARMEN: Absolutely. Thank you.

LINDA: Well, thank you so much. And thank you for joining us today on From Fact To Fiction. And we look forward to speaking with Carmen again soon. Thank you, everyone.

CARMEN: Thank you, Linda.

Thoughts?

Wow, you made it this far! How did you like the boook review? What can we do better?

Have you read Karla’s Choice? What did you think of Harkaway’s contribution to the Smiley series?

I look forward to your comments.

Linda