A Most Wanted Man - 20110830

Just finished reading A Most Wanted Man, a novel written by John Le Carre. 

The book was bought in the Book Fair, bundled with two other Grisham's.  Three stuff costed a mere $118.  What a bargain.  Comparing with Grisham's exciting thriller, Le Carre's is slight as water.

Though there are no less gritty remarks, the writing is prone to stillness.  Le Carre wasted little time on expanding the emotional connection among the three protagonists.  The English subtleness is an ocean apart to American's exposure.  It could be difficult to tell who's better.  Mood rules.  So, while riding on a bus, after a hard day work, Le Carre's plain dialogues could be quite a sedative.

I crawled to the end, and was amazed at the twist.  Le Carre masterfully rigged the plot, by trapping readers to assumed that the most wanted man would be the poor young man.  It only told how wrong you were in page 489, when there were only 2 pages left to cross the finishing line.  What a perfect demonstration of writer's talent.  In Hong Kong, when any nobody could publish a book in a tiny amount of $20,000, I guess it is a kind of blasphemy to writing.

And the novel propelled me to look up what extraordinary rendition is.  It is just an euphemism of state lynching by Uncle Sam.  By circumventing the legal framework, US "kidnaps" those suspected overseas terrorists and conducted interrogation in some countries with looser standard on human rights.  Suspects are likely to be tortured.  Obviously, there would be wrong-snatched innocent civilians who suffered.  Nevertheless, it could hardly tell whether the method is right or wrong.  We love peace.  However, if we give too much peace to terrorists, our peace shrinks.

So, the traditional Chinese wisdom shines again.  "Gentlemen stay away from kitchen".