THE NIGHT MANAGER by John Le Carre

Finished We 9/12/18

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I found on the shelves after watching the excellent mini-series, 'THE NIGHT MANAGER' on Amazon Prime. I just learned that this series has won numerous awards including three Golden Globes, and I loved it.

Put simply the story-line is;
" The night manager of a Cairo hotel is recruited to infiltrate an arms dealer's inner circle ".

Jonathan Pine is a night manager of an exclusive hotel in Cairo. He falls in love with a woman, Sophie who is the mistress of an Egyptian thug who is involved with international organized crime- especially arms dealing. She has entrusted Pine with documents that implicate a kingpin in the international arms trades, Richard Roper.

Sophie is murdered and Pine flees with the documents. Pine is an orphan who grew up in the British armed services. He's trained as an elite specialist, and has friends in the British intelligence community.

A false history of Pine is created. Pine appears to leave Egypt because he stole money from the hotel. And, he flees to rural Ireland and made to look as if he murders a 'partner in crime'.

In Ireland he seems most at home, and has a relationship with an older woman and her daughter. He rents a house from them.

Years later, Pine is the night manager  of a hotel in Switzerland, and Roper and his entourage shows up.

With the help of multinational intelligence services, Pine is able to insinuate himself into Roper's organization.

They fake a kidnapping of Roper's son where Pine appears to 'save the day'.

Pine becomes friends with Roper and gains his confidence in the running of the conglomerate. Pine is also close to Roper's beautiful mistress, Jeds.
The only 'most trusted' lieutenant in the outfit that never buys Pine's legitimacy is 'Corky' Corkoran. This man is portrayed as a vicious, yet effective, homosexual mastermind of the business. He was Roper's 'right hand man'.

In the end (I skimmed the last hundred pages) Pine and Jeds escape the gang and return to Ireland. He grows a beard and his friend insists that he is not Pine, but maybe a relative. Some of the people recognize him.

John LeCarre is not an easy read, and I spent more time on this book than I probably should. Overall, I liked the series better because it was such a perfect fit for a film. And the fact that it was a series that they were able to stretch the story-line across several hours.