John Le Carré's fifth novel, published in 1968, has resonances with today's politics in its depiction of a populist movement led by a demagogue threatening the established order in Germany. For the most part the book is a manhunt led by a rude and sometimes blundering but usually effective operative sent from London to track down a contract worker missing from the British Embassy in Bonn. For its skill in peeling an onion with countless layers before getting to the heart of the matter, A Small Town in Germany consistently entertains. Less effective is the rushed moralizing in the book's closing pages.
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