Drumming up sales
Sir: Mr David Pryce-Jones's perceptive and limpid review (16 April) of Mr le Carre's latest thriller, The Little Drummer Girl, reads into this book too much undeserved intellectual cerebration. Mr le Carr& may of late have become fashionably anti-Jewish, but such private beliefs would probably not interfere with his art. Being a literary en- trepreneur he may have chosen the plot and the tone of his latest effort with a shrewd eye on its marketability; and why not? Mr le Carr& has simply observed shifts in public opinion which in the 1980s have turned a little more anti-Jewish than anti-Arab; he thereby proved himself, like so many popular 19th-century authors, to have a good eye for business. As a writer he is commendably a man of the moment.
Nicholas A. H. Stacey
Reform Club, Pall Mall, London SW1
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