I’m reading a book that was recommended to me by several people and that sounded as if it would be a good story. The setting is interesting to me, the writing is adequate, but the plot and the characters seem flat, sort of unrealistic. The best descriptor I could find was “contrived.”

I’m not going to name the book because I don’t like criticizing authors who are living and not rich and might google their name and see my less-than-encouraging and less-than-authorative opinion. However, I will tell you that the book was published by a major Christian publisher. And that puts the book itself in the class of so-called “Christian fiction.” I’ve read some excellent stuff published by Christian publishers in the past couple of years. River Rising by Athol Dickson and Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner were as good as any book I read last year and better than most. But often when I read “Christian fiction,” the books, no matter where they’re set or what they’re about, have the same tone and feel to them. It’s something I find difficult to put my finger on exactly, but the plot and the dialog feel contrived, manipulated to make a point about the author’s spiritual beliefs. It feels wrong and annoys me as a Christian; I can only imagine what non-Christians who pick up one of these books think.

I’d like to give specific examples, but again I don’t really want to give the title away. Maybe it won’t be too much to say that the characters in the novel are not only Christians, but they also have specific ideas about how the Christian life should be lived out. And they talk about those ideas —a lot. And I feel as if I’m being taught a Bible study rather than told a story. The plot is basic romance: boy meets girl, complications, resolution, boy gets girl. There are complicating characters and misunderstandings thrown in to lengthen the novel and make a story, and that’s exactly how it feels —as if the minor characters are there to serve and strengthen the action and make the story go. They’re not real. The setting is the best thing the novel has going for it; it’s set in one of those places that I long to visit but probably never will, and I imagine I kept reading partly to get to the descriptions of the place and its rather peculiar customs.

There is probably lots mainstream fiction that is published with these same problems: a contrived plot, flat characters, preachiness. However, I don’t read chick-lit or romance novels, so I guess I don’t read the stuff that would make me have the same complaints about regular bookstore fiction. I still maintain that Christian authors shoul be better, not worse, than their secular counterparts. And even romance can be written with flair and intelligence.

What are your favorite romantic novels, and what is it that distinguishes them from the run-of-mill Harlequin or chick-lit or Christian sermonette novel?

I read on Wikipedia that John LeCarre actually was a spy for the British espionage unit M-16, and that his cover was blown and his career ended by double agent Kim Philby. Gerald, the Soviet double agent in the book, is to some extent a portrait of Kim Philby, and the protagonist George Smiley is “modelled on former Lincoln (College) rector Vivian H. H. Green.”

So the novel has some basis in fact and history. I thought it was a good book, but I did have some trouble following the plot. Between the British slang and the dated slang (published in 1974) and, most of all, the spy-talk, I was lost a good deal of the time. Then, too, I have the unfortunate habit of skimming over sections whenever I lose the thread of the story looking for a place to pick it up again. I often do this skimming unconsciously, and I sometimes skip right over the thread I needed to find.

So I may have missed a few details, but I got the gist of the story. George Smiley is an unwillingly retired M-16 agent who’s called back in to deal with a possible Soviet double agent entrenched in the highest echelons of M-16. The novel tells about how Smiley goes about finding the double agent, and it also deals with the lack of trust fostered by an environment whose stock in trade is betrayal. In Smiley/LeCarre’s M-16, no one fully trusts anyone, with good cause. I didn’t understand how Smiley knew exactly who to interview in order to figure who the Soviet “mole” was, but I suppose it was buried somewhere in the jargon.

So it’s a spy novel with a theme, trust and the lack of trust, and betrayal in politics and in realtionships. (Smiley’s wife, by the way, is cheating on him and has been for quite some time, a fact that is not without significance in the world of LeCarre’s spy story.) I read that there are two more novels by Le Carre featuring the retired spymaster, George Smiley. I probably won’t look for them anytime soon, but if you’re interested in a spy novel with a little more depth than James Bond, you might take a look at Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Then ‘splain the nuances to me.