From Magnus Pym in?A Perfect Spy,?through Barley Scott Blair in?The Russia House, Ned in?The Secret Pilgrim,?and Jonathan Pine in?The Night Manager,?John le Carr{??}e has dramatized the ideological crises of disenchanted spies. Choosing the personal over the political, the le Carr{??}e hero in the post-Smiley era has favored individuals over groups. But wait. Just when we get comfortable with this sweetly anarchistic, Huck Finnish view of life, we're thrown a roundhouse curve. Here's Tim Cranmer..., former British spymaster retiring to rural Somerset to devote himself to his new love, the mysterious Emma. Everything appears to be going splendidly until Larry Pettifer, once Tim's star agent, waltzes back into Tim's life, wooing Emma with revolutionary talk about the oppressed peoples of the Caucasus (the Chechens and the Ingush). Soon Emma and Larry, together with a former KGB general who has absconded with 37 million pounds of Russian money, are busy buying guns to fund an Ingush revolt. Tim goes off in hot pursuit of Emma but eventually finds himself deep in the Caucasus with a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder, vowing revenge against the evil Russians. So what's up here? Has le Carr?? changed his mind, read up on the Chechen situation, and decided that to be truly alive we must be committed to something greater than ourselves. Not exactly. Think of this novel as giving the other side equal time. As he did with Charlie in?The Little Drummer Girl, le Carr?? uses Tim and Larry to explore the lure of the higher cause. The most frightening and brilliant aspect of this surprising novel, which draws superbly on the human and ethical conundrums of Bosnia and Chechenya, is how appealing le Carr??'s reconstituted true believers seem, even to us smugly uncommitted Huck Finn types. The question of individual versus group, like so many things, is more complicated than it looks.?Bill Ott