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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
Sorry to be late to the party: I have been out all day and am just catching up.
Firstly, I'm so sorry to hear about your family member, Victoria. I do hope all goes well with her recovery from the surgery.
I certainly enjoyed reading this book and I think that le Carré writes well. Yes, he is angry about the evil things which are done, supposedly in our name - aren't we all? I certainly am.
Sadly, it says a great deal about what is and has been going on in the world to think that the death of an "illegal immigrant" (and how I hate that term) and her child wasn't big and bad enough to be the cause of the actions taken by Kit, Jeb and Toby.
I didn't get the feeling that Toby and Emily were going to end up dead. In describing the time leading up to Toby's beating, le Carré says:
in reference to a piece of sacking being put over his head. That doesn't suggest to me that he was about to be gunned down by whoever was coming for him with sirens wailing. The final sentence certainly suggests that several organisations might be coming for him at once.
Maybe I'm being too optimistic in thinking that Toby and Emily would survive. But the fact that le Carré doesn't end with a pile of corpses at least leaves the possibility that the decent man might live to fight another day.
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Yes, I got the feeling that the beating was a warning - although there is the suggestion that the beating might have done some serious damage, possibly fatal.
Instead of a killing, I would have expected something like career destruction to sideline Toby. So much easier to arrange, as with Jeb.